Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Commons^™

Practicing "In The Interests Of Justice" In The Twenty-First Century: Pursuing Peace As Justice, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In these comments I suggest that in our current world, both international and domestic, practicing "in the interests of justice" includes-indeed, should give great priority to-the "peace-seeking" and "problem solving" aspects of lawyering. I continue to see this as counter-cultural to the more common practices of lawyers who are argumentative, persuasive and articulate debaters, who believe fervently and vigorously that seeking justice, on behalf of a client or cause, means advocating for and "winning" a legal claim. To the contrary, seeking peace for parties (and, indeed, nation-states) in conflict, searching for consensus solutions to seemingly intractable public policy and legal …

Procedural Justice Research And The Paucity Of Trials, Chris Guthrie

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Professor Deborah Hensler tells an important cautionary tale about mandatory mediation in her thoughtful and provocative contribution to this volume. In Suppose It's Not True: Challenging Mediation Ideology, Hensler observes that courts are now requiring litigants to mediate civil cases "on the grounds that litigants prefer [mediation] to traditional litigation," yet there is "a long line of social psychological research on individuals' evaluations of different dispute resolution procedures" consistent with the "idea that litigants might prefer adversarial litigation and adjudication" to mediation.' Hensler acknowledges that "some experimental research has found that subjects prefer mediation," but she argues that "the empirical …

When Litigation Is Not The Only Way: Consensus Building And Mediation As Public Interest Lawyering, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

British social philosopher Stuart Hampshire recently articulated the fundamental and foundational principles of the modem conflict resolution movement (and I do call it a movement). He asserted that, "there will always be a plurality of different and incompatible conceptions of the good and there cannot be a single comprehensive and consistent theory of human virtue. Correspondingly, "our political enmities in the city or state will never come to an end while we have diverse life stories and diverse imaginations.'' Hampshire, a socially progressive, socialist philosopher hoped to articulate universal conceptions of the good. In his lifetime of reflection on this …

Ulysses Tied To The Generic Whipping Post: The Continuing Odyssey Of Discovery "Reform", Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

One need not be a charter member of the Critical Legal Studies Movement (“CLS”) to see a few fundamental contradictions in litigation practice in the United States. A prominent philosophical tenet of the CLS movement is that law and society are gripped by a “fundamental contradiction” and simultaneously seek to embrace contradictory objectives. Civil litigation, particularly discovery, is no exception: New amendments to the discovery rules are the latest example of this contradiction. Although the new changes are not drastic, they continue the post-1976 pattern of making discovery the convenient scapegoat for generalized complaints about the dispute resolution system. One …

Getting The Faith: Why Business Lawyers And Executives Believe In Mediation, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

Do you believe in mediation? That may seem like an odd question. Normally one thinks of ‘believing in‘ (or having faith in) things like magic, God, or the market. These are typically things that are beyond verifiable human knowledge (such as magic and God) and/or deeply held values (such as whether the market is a better mechanism than government for managing the flow of goods and services). At first blush, one might not think that mediation would fall into either category. There have been numerous empirical studies about many different aspects of mediation, so one can confidently say, for example, …

Toward More Sophisticated Mediation Theory, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

In the lead article in this symposium, Professor Jeffrey Stempel provides a very thoughtful analysis of the mediation field. He focuses on the debate over facilitative and evaluative mediation and he is critical of many of the arguments made by proponents of facilitative mediation. I have expressed some similar concerns, and I generally agree with his analysis (with a quibble here and there). I do think that the facilitation-evaluation debate has been productive (though admittedly wearisome), and that proponents of facilitative mediation deserve more credit than he gives them in his article.

Identifying Real Dichotomies Underlying The False Dichotomy: Twenty-First Century Mediation In An Eclectic Regime, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Some people (lawyers, scholars, judges, dispute resolvers, policymakers) are more concerned about fidelity to procedural protocols while others are more concerned with the substantive rules governing disputes and substantive outcomes. Those in the dispute resolution community preferring facilitation tend to be proceduralists. For them, the observance of proper procedure is a high goal, perhaps the dominant goal. They reason, often implicitly, that adherence to the rules of procedure is the essence of neutrality, fairness, and the proper role of a dispute resolving apparatus. At some level, usually subconscious, there is a post-modern philosophical aspect of this preference. Because humans cannot …

The Inevitability Of The Eclectic: Liberating Adr From Ideology, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

The problem with viewing facilitation as the only legitimate form of mediation, of course, is that it borders on tautology: mediation is nonevaluative, therefore any evaluation in mediation must be impermissible. Although this view remains strongly held in many quarters, it appears to be in retreat, both within the mediation community and in the legal community at large. Courts and commentators have shown increasing favor toward some evaluative or advising component of mediation. More important, the eclectic style appears to be what takes place in the metaphorical trenches of mediation practice (although sound empirical data is necessarily hard to obtain …

When Winning Isn’T Everything: The Lawyer As Problem Solver, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Today I want to address the question of what the modern lawyer needs to know and what the modern lawyer must know how to do to be good at what he or she does, to be helpful to clients, to lead a fulfilling life, and hopefully, to leave the world a better place than he or she first found it. I went to law school to work on that illusive jurisprudential concept - justice. On the outside walls of the Edward Bennett Williams Library where I work in Washington, DC, is a quote, which we attribute to a former Georgetown …

Precedent Lost: Why Encourage Settlement, And Why Permit Non-Party Involvement In Settlements?, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Which Cases Go To Trial?: An Empirical Study Of Predictors Of Failure To Settle, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Do The Haves Come Out Ahead In Alternative Justice Systems? Repeat Players In Adr, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Marc Galanter's essay, Why the "Haves" Come out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change (Why the "Haves" Come out Ahead), published twenty-five years ago, set an important agenda for those who care about the distributive effects of legal processes, including those of us who have been engaged in jurisprudential, intellectual, and empirical debates about the relative advantages and disadvantages of alternative and conventional legal procedures. As a document of legal intellectual history, this Article was formed in the crucible of the Legal Mobilization and Modernization program at Yale Law School that spawned so many "law and . …

Agenda: Outdoor Recreation: Promise And Peril In The New West, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center, Colorado. Bureau Of Land Management

Outdoor Recreation: Promise and Peril in the New West (Summer Conference, June 8-10)

Co-sponsored by the Natural Resources Law Center and the Colorado Bureau of Land Management.

The conference will explore several components of the “promise and peril” of the ongoing outdoor recreation explosion. The conference will begin on the morning of June 8 with a series of introductory presentations designed to place the outdoor recreation movement in a useful historical and socioeconomic context. This material will be followed in the afternoon session by a discussion of environmental impacts of outdoor recreation, recognizing that the diversity and magnitude of impacts is as broad as the industry itself. This discussion will be followed on …

Failing Faith In Litigation? A Survey Of Business Lawyers' And Executives' Opinions, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

To provide a more systematic assessment of contemporary faith in litigation, this article looks at a particular context-- business litigation--and analyzes the opinions of three groups of respondents: lawyers in private law firms who do commercial litigation (“outside counsel”), lawyers employed in business firms who do some litigation (“inside counsel”), and nonlawyer executives in business firms (“executives”). These groups have the greatest exposure to litigation in the corporate setting; furthermore, because they play powerful roles in our political, economic, and social life as well as the legal system, their opinions influence public opinion more generally.

The Protection Of International Investment At The Start Of The Twenty-First Century: Will Anachronistic Notions Of Business Render Irrelevant The Oecd's Multilateral Agreement On Investment, 31 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1201 (1998), Michael P. Avramovich

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Third Party Intervention And Joinder As Of Right In International Arbitration: An Infringement Of Individual Contract Rights Or A Proper Equitable Measure?, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

Arbitration has long been called a creature of contract, a dispute resolution mechanism that has no form or validity outside the four corners of the parties' arbitration agreement. Some feel, however, that it may be time to change this narrow interpretation of arbitration's function and scope, and nowhere is this need for reform more apparent than in the realm of multi-party international disputes. Arbitration has taken on an increasingly important role in international commercial transactions and has become the preferred dispute resolution mechanism in many types of transnational contracts. Although there are any number of reasons why this may be …

Transcript Of The Florida Tobacco Litigation Symposium - Fact, Law, Policy And Significance, Jeffrey W. Stempel, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

On November 17, 1997, Professors Jeffrey W. Stempel and Jean R. Sternlight joined a group of colleagues specializing in litigation at the Florida State University College of Law Review's Symposium on the tobacco litigation settlement reached between the State of Florida and five leading tobacco manufacturers that same year. The professors appeared on a panel to discuss the the relationship among the legal system, public health concerns, and tobacco. This is a transcript of those preceedings.

Symposium, The Florida Tobacco Litigation -- Fact, Law, Policy, And Significance, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

This is the transcript of the Florida tobacco litigation symposium, discussing the s$11.3 billion settlement concerning tobacco in the state of Florida. Jeffrey W. Stempel served as co-chair and moderator of the symposium.

A More Complete Look At Complexity, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

The ability of courts to successfully resolve complex cases has been a matter of contentious debate, not only for the last quarter-century, but for most of the twentieth century. This debate has been part of the legal landscape at least since Judge Jerome Frank's polemic book from which this Symposium derives its title, and probably since Roscoe Pound's famous address to the American Bar Association. During the 1980s and 1990s in particular, the battlelines of the pro-and anti-court debate have been brightly drawn. Some commentators, most reliably successful plaintiffs' counsel and politically liberal academics, defend the judicial track record in …

How Will Lawyering And Mediation Practices Transform Each Other?, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

This article sketches out some aspects of both lawyering and mediation practice that may be affected by development of a litimediation culture. Part II examines the growth of the private market for mediation and an accompanying specialization of mediation practice. These changes seem likely to require mediators to develop market niches with identifiable characteristics of their mediation practices. Simultaneously, lawyers, as regular buyers of mediation services, will be expected to recognize and make decisions based on significant distinctions between mediation providers.

Public Justice: Toward A State Action Theory Of Alterative Dispute Resolution, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

Various forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) are increasingly taking the place of litigation to resolve disagreements among parties. ADR is frequently imposed by court rule or legislative command for certain types of cases, or compelled by courts when private parties contract to use ADR. To date, ADR doctrine has focused on the structural issues attendant to bringing these processes into the mainstream of American dispute resolution. This Article contends that courts must now address the question of whether ADR-both court-related and contractual-can constitute state action, and therefore be subject to constitutional restraints. The author surveys the history and modern …

Beyond Formalism And False Dichotomies: The Need For Institutionalizing A Flexible Concept Of The Mediator's Role, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Related to the problem of the false dichotomy is the formalist application of the either/or construct. If, for example, one adopts as a first premise the view that mediation is by definition non-evaluative, and then rigidly applies this premise to issues of appropriate mediator behavior, the result is a formalist system that permits mediators little or no leeway to depart from the non-evaluative style. This sort of regulatory regimen may satisfy the non-evaluative ethos of some mediation scholars, but it does so at the risk of becoming a rigid system that prevents mediators from taking practical actions most appropriate to …

Using Decision Trees As Tools For Settlement, Marjorie Corman Aaron

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

While experienced lawyers can some­ times develop an intuitive sense of what a case is worth, their intuition may not be sufficient in a case of considerable complexity. Furthermore, intuitive "gut sense" valuations are hard to support or explain to clients.

Decision trees allow the parties and their lawyers to see more clearly how the strengths and weaknesses of their positions on specific issues will affect the overall value of a case. Long popular in the business community, deci­sion analysis has evolved as a tool for lawyers to help make decisions in complex litigation.

Maximizing Mediation And Arbitration Opportunities, Oregon Law Institute, William M. Mcallister, Sam J. Imperati, Richard G. Spier, Noreen K. Saltviet, Eric B. Lindauer, Ingrid E. Slezak, Lyle C. Velure, Judy S. Henry, Raymond R. Bagley Jr, Don A. Dickey, Kristena A. Lamar, Eve L. Miller

Oregon Law Institute, 1996

Course Materials from the May 23, 1996 Program in Portland

Culture And Mediation: A Red Herring, Cynthia A. Savage

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Reflections Of Judicial Adr And The Multi-Door Courthouse At Twenty: Fait Accompli, Failed Overture, Or Fledgling Adulthood, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Like any trend, ADR has its skeptics and even some opponents. Considerable debate exists regarding the degree to which the increasing ADRization of traditionally judicial activity amounts to triumph or tragedy, a point well-illustrated by the past Schwartz Lectures. In the 1993 Schwartz Lecture, Professor Laura Nader described the ADR movement as a byproduct of society's attempt to suppress or conceal uncomfortable conflicts. In the 1994 Lecture, Professor Judith Resnik essentially concluded that the modern ADR movement has brought a regrettable de facto closing of the court house (or at least raised barriers to entry) and replaced reflective decision-making about …

Bootstrapping And Slouching Toward Gomorrah: Arbitral Infatuation And The Decline Of Consent, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

The Seventh Amendment to the Constitution preserves for litigants a right to a jury trial in actions at law. The right to a jury trial does not attach for equitable actions, but in cases presenting claims for both legal and equitable relief a right to a jury trial exists for common questions of fact. Although many modern statutes and claims did not exist in 1791, the Amendment has been interpreted to require a jury trial of statutory claims seeking monetary damages, the classic form of legal relief, so long as there is a relatively apt analogy between the modern statutory …

Representing The Unrepresented In Class Action Settlements, Brian Wolfman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Class actions are important and useful both to deter wrongful conduct and to provide compensation for injured plaintiffs. In complex cases, however, the existing class action structure falters. In this article, Messrs. Wolfman and Morrison argue that in "settlement class actions" the current class action rules do not adequately protect class members whose interests do not coincide with those of the class representatives and the class attorneys. Through a survey of recent, prominent settlement class actions, the authors show that the current system does not fairly treat subgroups in a class with respect to matters as diverse as future injury, …

Effective Settlement Advocacy, Oregon Law Institute, Susan J. Smith, Beth A. Pardo, Joshua Kadish, Linda Sherman, Jeff Abrams, Samuel J. Imperati

Oregon Law Institute, 1995

Course Materials from the June 15, 1995 Program in Portland

Managing Reclamation Facilities For Ecosystem Benefits, Lawrence J. Macdonnell

Sustainable Use of the West's Water (Summer Conference, June 12-14)

26 pages.

Contains references.