Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Commons^™

Being There: Perils Of Disembodied Mediation, Robert Mcniff

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The article examines the rise of online mediation, particularly accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and critiques its limitations compared to in-person mediation. Drawing on 20th-century philosophical, psychological, and sociological thought, the analysis argues that online mediation diminishes the embodied, emotional, and intersubjective dimensions of human interaction, which are critical for empathy, moral agency, and meaningful dispute resolution. While online mediation offers convenience, it risks dehumanizing the process by reducing participants to disembodied images, thereby undermining the unique strengths of mediation as a holistic and empathetic alternative to legal adjudication.

Time-Pressured Negotiations, Hal Abramson

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This Article considers how to negotiate when you do not have the time to use your best negotiation practices. No other article has considered what to do when in a time-pressured negotiation other than to advise you not to be trapped by a deadline. When you have no choice but to rush, this Article examines the choices that will reduce the risks posed by skipping any best practices.

This Article first considers the inherent risks of taking shortcuts and then describes a negotiation map suitable when not rushed as a guide for selecting shortcuts when rushed. After this introduction, the …

The Singapore Convention On Mediation: A New Framework For International Settlement Enforcement, Peter Phillips, Zachary Calo, Harold I. Abramson

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The Singapore Convention on Mediation undeniably represents a landmark development in the field of international dispute resolution, providing a long-awaited and much-needed international enforcement framework that has the significant potential to substantially enhance the credibility, attractiveness, and overall effectiveness of mediated settlement agreements in cross border commercial disputes. By establishing a more predictable and reliable mechanism for the enforcement of these voluntarily reached agreements, the Convention directly addresses a critical gap that had long existed in the international dispute resolution landscape, particularly when compared to the well-established regime for the enforcement of international arbitral awards under the New York Convention. …

Restorative Justice In Legal Education, Lindsey Pointer, Aparna Polavarapu, Alanna Ojibway

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No abstract provided.

International Arbitration And Conflicts Of Law: Three Hard Questions For Symeon, Peter B. Rutledge

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The presence of a foreign element in a legal relationship inevitably introduces intricate choice-of-law issues. This postulate holds especially true in the context of international arbitration. Arbitration involves an exceptional degree of procedural freedom (including over the choice of the applicable law) and a distinctive conflict-of-laws regime that may be unbound from a particular national legal system. This article examines several choice-of-law issues arising in the context of international arbitration. In particular, Section I of this article addresses whether the United Nations Convention on Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, otherwise known as the New York Convention, is selfexecuting …

Settlement As Construct: Defining And Counting Party Resolution In Federal District Court, Charlotte S. Alexander, Nathan Dahlberg, Anne M. Tucker

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Most civil cases settle. Yet generating a definitive settlement rate presents complex definitional and empirical problems, both in what should count as a settlement and how to count it. This Essay makes three contributions to better understanding and defining settlement. First, we propose a flexible, empirically informed, operationalizable definition of settlement as party resolution. Second, we exploit a new federal litigation data source to count party resolutions using machine learning models trained on 11 million docket sheet entries. Third, we offer new findings on party resolution frequency and distribution in the federal courts. Settlement is more widely and differently deployed …

An Unprecedented Verdict: Expanding Parental Liability For Children’S Violent Crimes, Jolie Bodner Zangari

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No abstract provided.

Negotiation Map For Teaching And Practice, Harold I. Abramson

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Negotiations can move at lightning speed in unpredictable directions, leaving you seconds to instinctively act. Your instinct can be informed by first-hand experiences, formal education, and mistakes. You can boost your instinct by using the negotiation map in this article for tracking where you are and guiding where you and others should go to reach a resolution. This three-part map solves a puzzle that has confounded me for a couple decades. It offers a succinct and practical schematic that has the capacity to incorporate much of the exponential growth in literature and learning since Getting to Yes was published in …

Labor Rights And Dispute System Design: Assessing The Legal Legacy Of The 2022 Qatar World Cup, Zachary R. Calo

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The aim of this paper is not to relitigate Qatar’s human rights record but to assess the effectiveness of its labor reforms: the principal concern is dispute resolution and enforceability. While Qatar instituted a broad suite of labor law reforms in the years preceding the World Cup, questions remain about whether they have improved access to justice for migrant workers. More attention needs to be given to the dispute settlement system established by Law No. 13 of 2017 to assess if new legal norms translate into enforceable rights. It is argued that the labor dispute system has largely failed by …

Community Accountability, M. Eve Hanan, Lydia Nussbaum

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This Essay takes a close look at how the idea of community accountability is used in current transformative and restorative justice efforts, situating the concept within the history of delegalization, or a collection of different efforts to reclaim conflict resolution and public safety from the state. In fact, these efforts to reclaim the authority and means of redressing harm from legal systems may track earlier efforts to reclaim dispute resolution from the state. In Part I, we situate both transformative and restorative justice movements in the history of delegalization while noting essential differences between the objectives of these two reform …

Systemic Risk Of Contract, Tal Kastner

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Complexity and uncertainty define our world, now more than ever. Scholars and practitioners have celebrated modular contract design as an especially effective tool to manage these challenges. Modularity divides complex structures into relatively discrete, independent components with simple connections. The benefits of this fundamental drafting approach are intuitive. Lawyers divide contracts into sections and provisions to make them easier to understand and reduce uncertainty. Dealmakers constructing complex transactions use portable agreements as building blocks to reduce drafting costs and enable innovation. Little attention, however, has been paid to the risks introduced by modularity in contracts. This Article demonstrates how this …

In-Person Or Via Technology?: Drawing On Psychology To Choose And Design Dispute Resolution Processes, Jean R. Sternlight, Jennifer K. Robbennolt

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Covid-19 fostered a remote technology boom in the world of dispute resolution. Pre-pandemic, adoption of technical innovation in dispute resolution was slow moving. Some attorneys, courts, arbitrators, mediators and others did use technology, including telephone, e-mail, text, or videoconferences, or more ambitious online dispute resolution (ODR). But, to the chagrin of technology advocates, many conducted most dispute resolution largely in-person. The pandemic effectively put the emerging technological efforts on steroids. Even the most technologically challenged quickly began to replace in-person dispute resolution with videoconferencing, texting, and other technology. Courts throughout the world canceled all or most in-person trials, hearings, conferences, …

Carrie Menkel-Meadow: Leading Us Toward Justice And Peace, Jean R. Sternlight

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This Essay explores how Carrie Menkel-Meadow's life and work have both highlighted the path of "And"-showing and explaining that it is not only possible but also desirable to seek justice as well as peace, to be both activist and neutral. Of course, tensions will remain. Regarding particular issues in specific moments we all must decide which path we can and should take. Which activism is best, and which goes too far? With whom can we or should we negotiate, and when should we instead say, "I can't negotiate with this person or group"? When should we talk and listen, and …

Negotiating Social Change: Backstory Behind The Repeal Of Don’T Ask, Don’T Tell, Linell A. Letendre, Hal Abramson

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This Article is about negotiating social change in the largest U.S.institution, the Military and its five Services. Inducing social change in any institution and society is notoriously difficult when change requires overcoming clashing personal values among stakeholders. And, in this negotiation over the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), clashing values over open service by gays and lesbians were central to the conflict.

In response to President Obama’s call to repeal DADT, the Secretary of Defense selected a Working Group to undertake studies, surveys and focus groups to inform the debate. During the nine-month process of gathering a massive …

Alternative Dispute Revolutions: Technology And Adr In The Middle East Following The Covid-19 Pandemic, Zachary R. Calo, Barry Solaiman

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This article seeks to close a gap in the literature on the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in the Middle East. In particular, it examines unprecedented developments in countries situated in the Persian Gulf where a range of innovative institutions outside the domestic court system provide ADR services. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates host a number of sophisticated international courts as well as specialized dispute resolution centers backed by the English common law and recognised international arbitration and mediation rules. The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated remote hearings around the world as courts seek to dispense justice …

The Uncertain Fate Of Asymmetrical Dispute Resolution Clauses In Arbitration Around The Globe: To Be Or Not To Be, Raluca Papadima

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This article examines the validity and enforceability of asymmetrical dispute resolution clauses combining arbitration and litigation. Such clauses are currently favored by businesses in their search for a method of dispute resolution that provides a more favorable position for one of the parties to an agreement and ensures better enforcement against the assets of the counterparty.

Pouring A Little Psychological Cold Water On Online Dispute Resolution, Jean R. Sternlight

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This Article examines the strengths and weaknesses of ODR (online dispute resolution) from a psychological perspective. It makes five main points:

(1) The phrase ODR is too broad to be useful. This phrase encompasses many different kinds of technology (computer, phone, video, mechanical pencil), many different kinds of dispute resolution (litigation, negotiation, arbitration, mediation), disputes arising in many different contexts (consumer, family, property, tax, employment, etc.), and many different roles (technology as neutral, technology as aide to neutral, technology as aide to disputant, etc.). In order to consider whether and when ODR can be most useful we will need to …

Adr, Dynamic (In)Justice, And Achieving Access: A Foreclosure Crisis Case Study, Lydia Nussbaum

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This Article proceeds in two parts. Part I argues for a dynamic, rather than fixed, conception of access to justice. It then explores how ADR processes, when placed in this dynamic framework, can create new forms of injustice and intensify preexisting ones. Part II presents a case study from the foreclosure crisis to illustrate how the features of ADR processes are especially well suited to respond to dynamic injustices. It further demonstrates how ADR design must evolve to respond to the dynamic system of (in)justice in which ADR processes operate.

Justice In A Brave New World?, Jean R. Sternlight

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As science fiction has become reality, we should consider the implications of our new technologies for our system of justice. In addition to DNA, we are now regularly using cameras, geo-tracking, facial recognition software, brain scans, computers, and much more to discern and record our physical and mental surroundings. Existing technology and more we cannot yet imagine will increasingly take the place of often unreliable evidence, such as that provided by eyewitnesses. Yet, we have given far too little thought as to how these advances should impact our civil and criminal dispute resolution systems.

Historically, many justice systems have emphasized …

Regulating Impartiality In Agency Adjudication, Kent H. Barnett

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Which should prevail—the Take Care Clause of Article II or the Due Process Clause? To Justice Breyer’s chagrin, the majorities in Lucia v. SEC and Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB expressly declined to resolve whether the U.S. Constitution condones SEC administrative law judges’ and other similarly situated agency adjudicators’ current statutory protection from at-will removal. The crux of the problem is that, on one hand, senior officials may use at-will removal to pressure agency adjudicators and thereby potentially imperil the impartiality that due process requires. On the other hand, Article II limits Congress’s ability to cocoon executive officers, including potentially …

The New Singapore Mediation Convention: The Process And Key Choices, Harold Abramson

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No abstract provided.

Contract Creep, Tal Kastner, Ethan J. Leib

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Scholars and judges think they can address the multiple purposes and values of contract law by developing different doctrinal regimes for different transaction types. They think if we develop one track of contract doctrine for sophisticated parties and another for consumers, we can build a better world of contract: protecting private ordering for sophisticated parties and protecting consumers’ needs all at once. Given the growing enthusiasm for laying down these separate tracks and developing their infrastructures, this Article brings a necessary reality check to this endeavor by highlighting for scholars and judges how doctrine in contract law functions in fact: …

Introduction: Singapore Convention Reference Book, Harold Abramson

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No abstract provided.

Mediator Burnout, Lydia Nussbaum

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Being a mediator is hard work Mediators must make meaningful connections with individuals without over-stepping bounds of impartiality, manage emotions without becoming emotionally invested, and empower decision-making without undermining self-determination. Decades of research into occupational stress, also known as "burnout," indicates that mediators not only are susceptible to burnout, but also that the symptoms of burnout undermine fundamental principles of quality mediation. For example, a burned-out mediator may exhibit narrow and uncreative thinking, diminished capacity to regulate emotions, compromised decision-making, and deficits in attention and memory.

The prospect of mediator burnout not only threatens the quality of mediation, but it …

Global Carceral Feminism And Domestic Violence: What The West Can Learn From Reconciliation In Uganda, Aparna Polavarapu

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Around the world, policies and laws emphasizing criminal justice have dominated domestic violence interventions for decades. In the United States, certain feminist advocates worked with state actors to develop a primarily criminal justice response to domestic violence. Western influence in the international human rights movement has spread this approach around the world, leading it to become the key means of addressing violence against women. However, critics argue that the overreliance on the criminal justice system is a key failure of the anti-domestic-violence movement, with some referring to the strain of feminism promoting prosecution as "carceral feminism. " The carceral approach …

Mandatory Arbitration Stymies Progress Towards Justice In Employment Law: Where To, #Metoo?, Jean R. Sternlight

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Today our employment law provides workers with far more protection than once existed with respect to hiring, firing, salary, and workplace conditions. Despite these gains, continued progress towards justice is currently in jeopardy due to companies’ imposition of mandatory arbitration on their employees. By denying their employees access to court, companies are causing employment law to stultify. This impacts all employees, but particularly harms the most vulnerable and oppressed members of our society for whom legal evolution is most important. If companies can continue to use mandatory arbitration to eradicate access to court, where judges are potentially influenced by social …

Mediation: An Unlikely Villain, Thomas O. Main

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Professor Main argues that the modem ADR movement (and mediation in particular), rather than some (other) ideology, beget the pleading and summary judgment standards that exemplify contemporary practice and procedure in the fourth era in the history of American civil procedure. The other key reforms of the fourth era-the vanishing trial, the embrace of ADR, judicial case management and the pursuit of settlement by any means necessary-are more obviously tied to the modem ADR movement. Blame for all of the key fourth era reforms is thus traceable to the modern ADR movement. This, in turn, matters because it is generally …

Singapore Mediation Convention Reference Book, Harold Abramson (Faculty Editor)

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No abstract provided.

Fashioning An Effective Negotiation Style: Choosing Between Good Practices, Tactics, And Tricks, Harold I. Abramson

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This article addresses two long standing issues in negotiations. First, what choices should we make to be effective? This article offers a schema for classifying the choices into one of three categories and in so doing, classifies choices based on likely benefits and degree of risk when fashioning an effective negotiation style. The second question is how to distinguish between negotiation style, the subject of this article, and our natural conflict style. By highlighting the distinction between how we want to negotiate (negotiation style) and how we naturally negotiate (conflict style), this article offers a way to become the negotiator …

Realizing Restorative Justice: Legal Rules And Standards For School Discipline Reform, Lydia Nussbaum

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Zero-tolerance school disciplinary policies stunt the future of school children across the United States. These policies, enshrined in state law, prescribe automatic and mandatory suspension, expulsion, and arrest for infractions ranging from minor to serious. Researchers find that zero-tolerance policies disproportionately affect low-income, minority children and correlate with poor academic achievement, high drop-out rates, disaffection and alienation, and greater contact with the criminal justice system, a phenomenon christened the "School-to-Prison Pipeline."

A promising replacement for this punitive disciplinary regime derives from restorative justice theory and, using a variety of different legal interventions, reform advocates and lawmakers have tried to institute …