As everyone who follows the news of the day knows, there was a little dust-up in Cambridge, Mass. last week. (If you need a primer to catch up, go here). President Obama is scheduled today to meet and have a beer with Cambridge Police Officer, Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard faculty member Henry Louis Gates, Jr. While all the late night comics will crack the “great taste – less filling” argument jokes, this sounds a lot like a mediation of a non-litigated case to me. Yes, there are questions about Obama’s impartiality, apparently he and Gates are friends, but the analogy is there.
Naturally, Bob Mnookin at Harvard had the good sense of discussing the idea of mediation in this instance, which is captured in an interview with the Boston Globe before we knew of the President’s invitation (you can find it here). And, the Wall Street Journal’s Legal Blog picked up on the interview and thought his suggestion was a good one (the WSJ piece is here).
This incident is a good reminder of what lawyers see all the time – issues blown out of proportion, big egos, competing stories, and a fair amount of poor behavior by everyone involved. It will be interesting to see what comes of today’s meeting.
Mediation of this type of dispute (especially with implications of a racial undertone) would be a perfect example of a highly emotional situation. Any mediation of this kind would require a negotiator to be particularly attuned to the mood and emotions emanating in the room. Negative emotions often lead to an escalation of the conflict. When the parties are frustrated and blame the other parties, the conflict will often become personal.
I think that a mediation where the president of the United States is a party would be a difficult mediation, to say the least. Power plays an important role in the dynamics of any negotiation. I can only imagine how nervous the Cambridge police officer was before he went to the White House.
Heather McCarthy
Vermont Law School