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Journal of Dispute Resolution

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Journal of Dispute Resolution

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Journal of Dispute Resolution

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Symposium Introduction: Artificial Intelligence, Real Attorneys, And The Art Of Lawyering: Utilizing The Tools Of Ai To Enhance, Not Inhibit, Our Humanity, Carli N. Conklin

Journal of Dispute Resolution

In recent years, legal academia has seen a proliferation of symposia and conferences focused on the interrelationship between the increasing prevalence and sophistication of artificial intelligence, and the opportunities and challenges AI provides for our work in legal teaching, legal research and writing, and the practice of law. Here at the University of Missouri Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution and Journal of Dispute Resolution, we could not help but think about the rise of artificial intelligence in the practice of law through a dispute resolution lens. More specifically, we became increasingly curious about the unfolding interplay between artificial …

The Limits Of Disclosure: Artificial Intelligence, Arbitration, And The Illusion Of Informed Consent, Rishi Batra

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Consider the following scenario: A warehouse worker brings a wage and hour claim against her employer under her state's labor code. Her employment contract, which she signed on her first day of work, contains a mandatory arbitration clause that she did not negotiate, did not fully read, and — like most employees in her situation — did not fully understand. An arbitrator is appointed, a hearing is held, and an award is issued in the employer's favor several weeks later, denying the employee's claims entirely. The award is well-organized and internally consistent, addressing each of the worker's claims with what …

A Decade Of Change: Technology’S Impact On Negotiation Deepens In The Age Of Ai, Noam Ebner

Journal of Dispute Resolution

When people consider the notion of negotiation changing, they tend to look first toward that magnificent negotiation construct, “the table.” Here are some immediately apparent areas of table-novelty: • There is often a screen on our table, rather than another person sitting across from us. • The table we “go” to negotiate at is not in our office or that of our counterpart; rather, it is a communications system such as email or an online platform developed by a third-party provider. • The table, in its online-platform form, sometimes structures process and facilitates communication in ways that our trusty old …

Artificial Intelligence, Real Humans, And The Art Of Lawyering: Reflections From Practice, Jenna Homeyer

Journal of Dispute Resolution

René Descartes famously stated, “I think, therefore I am.” As artificial intelligence (“AI”) increases in prevalence throughout society and the field of law, we might ask ourselves, who are we if we allow AI to think for us? This symposium began with a question about the interplay between artificial intelligence and the human skills present in the art of lawyering. After using AI in my legal practice for the past two and half years, I can attest that there remains a very human skill set that is necessary to the art of good or effective lawyering. AI can be a …

Rps Mediator Coachbuilder, John Lande

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Instructions for AI Tool

Using Ai Centaur Systems To Strengthen Professional Judgment, John Lande

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This article encourages dispute resolution practitioners to use artificial intelligence (AI) “centaur” systems, which may perform better than either humans or AI tools operating independently. Centaur systems combine human and AI capabilities so that each contributes complementary strengths in decision-making. This is particularly important in managing legal disputes, where practitioners should integrate analysis of legal issues, tangible and intangible costs, strategic judgment, and ethical considerations.

The Life And Work Of Odr Visionary And Architect Colin Rule (So Far), John Lande

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Many people know Colin Rule as a pioneer of online dispute resolution. Fewer people probably appreciate the full breadth of his contributions over the last three decades. This article reviews Rule’s work as a builder of dispute resolution systems, writer, educator, entrepreneur, and institutional leader. It highlights recurring themes in his career and scholarship, including trust, fairness, usability, access to justice, and the need to keep human judgment at the center of technological innovation.

Cooling Conflict: Embedding Mediation Protocols In Data Center Land Sale Contracts, Allison Elias

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Imagine a two-thousand-acre plot of land in rural Louisiana being leveled to accommodate a 10 billion dollar data center. With the construction of this data center comes the destruction of a region inhabited by rich plant and animal life as well as 80,000 residents, a quarter of whom live below the poverty line. Alternatively, think of a $750 million data center being built next door to your home, causing sediment build-up in your water supply, water scarcity, light pollution, and destruction of neighboring forests. Unfortunately, one does not have to imagine these scenarios. Both stories come directly from recent news …

Reports Of Legal Writing’S Death Are Greatly Exaggerated: Why Generative Ai Will Not Kill The Craft, Jayne T. Woods

Journal of Dispute Resolution

In preparing for this essay, I typed the phrase “legal writing is” into Google to see how common searches finished the thought. The only completed thought to appear was “legal writing is hard.” Amen. Legal writing is an amalgamation of logical reasoning, cognitive psychology, classical rhetoric, legal terminology, legal citation, and proper grammar and style, all of which must result in a product accessible to readers of all education levels. When generative AI arrived, producing cogent, plausible legal prose in seconds, it led many to believe that writing, generally, and legal writing, specifically, had reached the end of days.

Mirror, Mirror On My Screen, Can You Feel Like A Human Being?, Lauren A. Newell

Journal of Dispute Resolution

We cannot go anywhere without encountering artificial intelligence (AI) these days. AI has infiltrated our phones, our cars, and our washing machines. It is with us in doctors’ offices, at the drive-through, and at sporting events. It has taken over our calendars and our inboxes and our videoconferences, and it would like to help us brush our teeth, too.

Justice After Atrocity: Lessons From Rwanda And Cambodia For Contemporary International Law And Conflict, Jennie Hubbard

Journal of Dispute Resolution

In the aftermath of mass atrocity, the question facing survivors and policymakers is not whether societies will rebuild but how rebuilding will address truth, justice, and memory. Modern transitional justice systems trace institutional and normative roots to the post—World War II order, most famously embodied by the Nuremberg Trials, which first established that individuals could be held accountable for crimes against humanity. Nuremberg did more than punish Nazi officials; it articulated a legal and moral principle that the international community could, and sometimes must, assert jurisdiction to address mass crimes when domestic systems fail. Despite that precedent, global reactions to …

Beyond City Limits: Access To Adr And Child Client-Directed Counsel In Missouri’S Rural Family Courts, Reghan Matlock

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Reba McEntire once sang, “Don’t trust your soul to no backwoods southern lawyer”—a warning that still echoes in today’s debates about rural justice and representation. The catchy murder ballad captures a story driven by dramatic family ties and a broken justice system. While the song exaggerates for effect, it taps into a realistic concern: an existing divide in access to justice between rural and urban communities. This divide impacts all areas of law, including family law—where concerns about confidentiality and privacy are heightened because small communities make it difficult to shield sensitive matters from public view. The divide is troubling, …

Reforming Mediation: The Hidden Inequities Shaped By Race, Gender, And Power, Victoria Seever

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Courts and policymakers often promote family dispute resolution as a faster, less adversarial alternative to traditional litigation. Yet for many women of color, the mediation table often replicates the same racial and gender power imbalances that the legal system claims to mitigate. Family Dispute Resolution (“FDR”) often fails women of color by reinforcing racialized and gendered power imbalances. Alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”), especially mediation, presents both an opportunity and a risk in divorce, custody, and intimate partner violence (“IPV”) cases. IPV cases become especially difficult with the various laws in different states that govern how mediation should be used and …

Public, Private, Acquired, Alexander I. Platt, Matthew T. Wansley

Articles

For the last quarter-century, IPOs have been declining. SEC officials usually attribute the decline to startups’ choices to stay private. But that explanation is incomplete. As startups grow, they face a three-way choice between going public, staying private, and being acquired, and they have increasingly chosen the third option. In this Essay, we show how securities regulation pushes startups towards acquisitions by increasing the cost of raising capital and accessing liquidity in both public and private markets. We consider how the trend towards acquisitions could reduce competition, innovation, opportunities for diversification, and transparency. And we offer suggestions for how the …

Can The Epa Withdraw The Endangerment Finding?, Jonathan Adler

Faculty Publications

The Trump administration has made repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases the centerpiece of its environmental deregulation agenda. “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the US, and more,” proclaimed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin when announcing the agency’s plan to reconsider the finding in March 2025. Since then, the agency has followed through, pushing endangerment finding repeal ahead of other, more traditional, deregulatory efforts. While politically popular with parts of President …

An Abundant Lack Of Introspection, Jonathan Adler

Faculty Publications

In this review Jonathan Adler critiques Abundance authors Klein and Thompson's analysis of how regulation is holding back progress in decarbonization, America's housing supply crisis, and innovation. While agreeing with the authors' assessment that regulation policy is hampering efforts in these areas, Adler objects to the book's proposals for improving regulatory bottlenecks, arguing the authors of Abundance refuse to acknowledge the role of market institutions in creating abundant supply or to admit the fault in their assumption that the failures of centralized government decision making can be repaired while maintaining centralized government decision making.

This abstract has been constructed from …

Operational Agency: A Permeable Legal Fiction For Tracing Culpability In Ai Systems, Anirban Mukherjee, Hannah H. Chang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems act with a high degree of independence yet lack legal personhood—a paradox that fractures doctrines grounded in human-centric notions of mens rea and actus reus. This Article introduces Operational Agency (OA)—a permeable legal fiction structured as an ex post evidentiary framework—and Operational Agency Graph (OAG)—a tool for mapping causal interactions among human actors, organizations, and AI systems. OA evaluates an AI’s observable operational characteristics: its goal-directedness (as a proxy for intent), predictive processing (as a proxy for foresight), and safety architecture (as a proxy for standard of care). OAG operationalizes that analysis by embedding these …

From Chainsaws To Courtrooms: Corporate Climate Litigation And Deforestation In Brazil, Maria Antonia Tigre, Mariana Barbosa Cirne

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Corporate climate litigation has emerged as one of the most dynamic and high profile tools for addressing the private sector’s role in the climate crisis. While much of the scholarship and public debate has centered on cases in the United States and Europe, litigation targeting corporations in the Global South — particularly Brazil — has grown rapidly, both in volume and significance. Brazil now ranks among the world’s top jurisdictions for corporate climate damage claims. These suits have pioneered methods for quantifying climate damages, often from illegal deforestation, and have tested the reach of the civil liability regime in novel …

July 2026 From The Editor — 40 Years Of Success And Value To You, Romesh Nalliah

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

• Editor-in-Chief Romesh Nalliah uses the historical example of King Hammurabi's loan agreements to illustrate the foundational concept of risk management and insurance. He celebrates the 40th anniversary of the MDA Insurance & Financial Group, highlighting its growth into a full-service agency that addresses the specific needs of dentists. Nalliah emphasizes the "multiplicative effect" of supporting these member-governed services: they offer individual cost savings and generate non-dues revenue that funds broader MDA benefits and reduces dues. He credits the association's volunteer leadership for establishing this successful model of value-driven professional support.

July 2026 Mda At Your Service — Who Can Supervise Dental Assistant Radiography Training In Michigan?, Mda Membership Department Staff

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This Q&A feature provides practical guidance on common professional and licensing questions for Michigan dentists. It clarifies that any licensed dentist can supervise required dental assistant radiography training, highlighting the MDA's online program. The article also offers advice for new dentists looking to connect with colleagues through local societies and the "New Doc Connection" online hub. Additionally, it outlines the mandatory steps for updating a professional license after a legal name change and directs members to valuable MDA resources for navigating dental insurance contracts and third-party payer agreements.

July 2026 Dentistry And The Law — Can Unlicensed People Own A Dental Practice? Who Is Enforcing The Law?, Daniel Schulte Jd

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This legal column addresses the complexities of dental practice ownership in Michigan, clarifying that only licensed dentists can legally own a practice through professional corporations or professional limited liability companies. It explains the "Corporate Practice of Medicine Doctrine," which aims to ensure licensed professionals, rather than profit-motivated lay persons, control health service delivery. The article details how management companies often operate legally as landlords or service providers without technically owning the practice itself. Finally, it notes that only the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs and the attorney general have the authority to enforce these regulations.

Preemption Of State Fraudulent Transfer Law By The Bankruptcy Code, David G. Carlson

Articles

The article argues that state law tort claims based on fraudulent transfers are preempted by the Bankruptcy Code. It contends that allowing such tort claims to persist interferes with a bankruptcy trustee's ability to achieve universal settlements and recover assets, as the trustee cannot guarantee immunity from third-party tort liabilities.

Demographic Trends And Far-Right Party Support In Europe: The Role Of The Cordon Sanitaire, Maxwell Curry

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study examines whether cordons sanitaires, institutional exclusionary arrangements common in Western and Central Europe on the part of mainstream political actors aimed to prevent far-right political parties perceived as posing a threat to liberal democratic order from entering into governing coalitions or otherwise participating in mainstream political life, condition the relationship between immigration-related demographic change and support for far-right political parties. Contemporary scholarship has extensively examined the relationship between immigration and support for far-right political parties, but comparatively little research has examined the institutional factors that potentially condition such a relationship. In an analysis of parliamentary election data …

State Policy And Regulatory Approaches To Sustainable Aviation Fuel Across The United States, Somtochukwu Attamah, Mary Johnson, Lara Fowler, Michael D. Helbing

Faculty Scholarship

Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) represents a critical lever for achieving near-term decarbonization of the aviation industry. SAF can be manufactured for “drop-in” use in existing aircraft and fueling systems, allowing manufacturers to achieve lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) savings relative to standard jet fuel. However, U.S. policy is still disjointed: federal incentives are accompanied by diffuse state efforts, which means uneven market-based feedback and investment risk. After outlining the federal policy context, this Article conducts a comparative analysis of SAF-related policy frameworks across the fifty states. This includes a variety of government solutions offered in the form of enacted and proposed …

Bodies In The Beds: How Reits, Private Equity Firms, And County Hospitals Monetize Nursing Home Residents As Real Estate Acquisitions, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

Nursing home residents have become monetized targets of real estate acquisitions. Established in 1960, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) were envisioned as allowing individuals to invest in commercial real estate without owning properties. That seemingly innocuous investment idea has led to the growth of a behind-the-scenes empire of little-understood conglomerates of REITs buying up nursing homes and other healthcare facilities across the country. Capitalizing on tax-exempt income incentives, exploiting “triple-net” leasebacks, funneling profits through subsidiaries, and shielding ownership and assets from the liability of operations, the corporatized owners extract cash from facilities and leave harm in their wake. And to …

Patent Regime Shift And Firm Innovation Strategy: Evidence From The Second Amendment To China's Patent Law, Tony W. Tong, Wenlong He, Liang Chen, Zi-Lin He, Jiangyong Lu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research Summary: While changes in intellectual property rights (IPR) protection significantly shape firm innovation, the mechanisms driving firms' responses remain poorly understood. Leveraging the Second Amendment to China's Patent Law, which strengthens appropriability particularly for state-owned enterprises (SOEs), as a natural experiment, we show that stronger IPR has mixed effects on SOEs' innovation. While SOEs increase the rate of innovation subsequent to the Amendment, they shift the direction of innovation toward more familiar areas in which they face a lesser need to adjust existing routines. This directional change suggests a quality decline in SOEs' innovation that may be attributed to …

Interim Measures In International Commercial Arbitration: Revisiting Enforceability, Sophia Kubo

Michigan Journal of International Law

Interim measures may offer a solution to obstructive tactics in international commercial disputes. While arbitral tribunals’ authority to grant provisional relief is now widely recognized, enforcement remains legally uncertain and fragmented, undermining the promise of this solution. Acknowledging that proposals for a supranational treaty on enforcement of interim measures or an amendment to existing treaties are unrealistic, this article offers a critical analysis of existing enforcement models– court assistance, exequatur, and mixed approaches–and evaluates them through the lens of legal certainty and efficiency. The article argues that the exequatur model, supported by a dynamic interpretation of the New York Convention, …