ADR Scholarship Projects (Jan. 2024)

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From BFOI Peter Reilly (Texas A&M):

Let me open this edition with gratitude for Quinnipiac-Yale’s wonderful Works-in-Progress conference that took place in October…huge thanks again to Charlie Pillsbury, Carrie Kass, and Jen Brown for an excellent, fun, and productive conference!!!

Ava Abramowitz (GW Law), Ken Webb (Kenn Webb Consulting, LLC) and Jennifer Shack (RSI)

This is the fourth update on our research into what verbal communication behaviors mediators actually use in the course of helping disputes settle. 

We’re pleased to announce that we will soon launch Phase I of the project, which is coding small claims court Zoom-mediated cases. We expect to have coded enough mediations by April to make for an intriguing report at the Section’s Spring Meeting.

So far we have tested the 14 behaviors for inter-rater reliability and have learned that our definitions and the boundary line rules are sound. We now have mediation communication behaviors that:

  • do not overlap
  • are objectively defined, eliminating the need to guess speaker intent
  • are measurable, with a high degree of accuracy and inter-rater reliability
  • are easily understood by parties, students, and specialists
  • are teachable and usable

We have worked hard to train and test volunteer coders, and, as a result, three individuals have been certified in the observation process and are eager to start coding. Eight mediators have volunteered to help us by letting us observe their work, and three mediation program sites are ready to invite them all in. So Phase I is all set to start.

Our goal at this stage is straightforward: we want to discover whether our research model works. More specifically, we hope to find out whether each participant’s communication behaviors can be linked to their demographics, expectations about the mediation, and perceptions of the mediation when it’s done. Then, can we correlate that data with outcome? If so, what insights might we get into what mediators, parties, and lawyers do that helps settle disputes?

We’re very excited about Phase I and expect to have interesting data and intriguing questions to discuss in April. We look forward to hearing your thoughts then.

Rick Bales (Ohio Northern Law)

I’m working on a new edition of Norman Brand’s Labor Arbitration: The Strategy of Persuasion. Norm self-published this book in 2006; I’ll be resurrecting and updating it. I’m looking for a publisher — if you have suggestions, please let me know. The target audience is mostly nonlawyer advocates, and we want to publish hard copy and not just online, so the traditional legal publishers don’t seem to be ideal fits.

Debra Berman (South Texas College of Law Houston) 

I am writing a comment for Discussions in Dispute Resolution (Volume II): The Coming of Age (2000-2009). The article I am reviewing is John Lande’s, Possibilities for Collaborative Law: Ethics and Practice of Lawyer Disqualification and Process Control in a New Model of Lawyering,64 OHIO St. L.J. 1315 (2003).   

As always, I continue to encourage the use of real lawsuits for simulations in classes and competitions. To that end, I selected federal lawsuits for the ABA Representation in Mediation Competition last spring and am doing so again for the 2024 competition. Students in each round mediated actual lawsuits and they received the relevant court documents along with short memoranda detailing confidential notes from their client. For last year’s preliminary round cases, please see: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kls0rc6jx0ouivnzv9mjw/ABA-Mediation-Competition-Cases-for-Prelims.pdf?rlkey=ixvg1umc06y3qr78opbuxczc9&dl=0 

Please reach out if you would like the confidential settlement memos.  

An ongoing project I have been working on is a live database of lawsuits (pending, settled, or otherwise) that professors can use to easily identify cases for simulations. In this document, I include case names, case type, length of key documents (and a link to those documents where applicable), and the case status. This is an editable list, and I encourage everyone to feel free to add cases they come across that would be appropriate for use in simulation classes. The database can be found here: 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vg_y2P6L0gHXEkjgglVeTlFvCehkLUM1n7Ns9Bdrnfw/edit?usp=sharing

Again, please reach out if you would like any of the confidential settlement memos.  

Lessons from Law Students: For the last three years, I have been collecting data from my Inter-School Negotiation Practicum (at this point totaling 2,800 students from 47 law schools). At the end of the monthlong settlement negotiation, each student is required to complete a post negotiation questionnaire to reflect on their experience. Two of those questions are “What advocacy lessons have you learned?” and “Looking back, what would you have done differently?” The responses have been informative, candid, and worthy of compilation for a future short article.  

Dan Berstein (MH Mediate) is a mediator/researcher living with bipolar disorder.  He is looking for collaborators who are interested in improving the vetting of professional guidance in the dispute resolution field.  Dan’s forthcoming Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation article, “Mistakes? Tools for Publishers and CLE Providers to Prevent Discriminatory Dispute Resolution Guidance,” builds on past work giving dispute resolvers tools to notice and address problematic content (such as inadvertent mental illness discrimination as well as any harmful, discriminatory, and illegal material).  You can see some other examples of past work, including classroom exercises and free syllabus review, at www.mhsafe.org/drguidance.  The goal is to advance a collaborative culture toward everyone growing together through welcoming and celebrating positive changes, as opposed to a cancel culture mentality or an avoidance mentality.  Some forthcoming projects include resources for professional organizations and others who have already distributed harmful material and would like to address the harm, minimize conflicts, and feel empowered in responding.  Dan would love to hear your feedback, share resources with you, learn from you, and/or include you in this work.  You can reach him at dan@mhmediate.com.  

Kristen Blankley (Nebraska Law)

Kristen Blankley has been working on a variety of book and chapter projects:

  • Updating and editing Arbitration: Law, Policy & Practice (2d ed. forthcoming), co-authored with Maureen Weston (Pepperdine) and Jill Gross (Pace). This edition provides important updates on new arbitration practices as a result of the pandemic, as well as updates on Supreme Court arbitration cases.
  • Updating and editing Understanding ADR (2d ed. forthcoming) co-authored with Maureen Weston. This treatise gives an overview of the field. Updates include new practices as a result of the pandemic, updated legal information, increased information on ombuds practice, and new information on court appointed neutrals.
  • Co-authored Court-Appointed Neutrals in Complex Litigation: Ethics Issues and Norms with Irma Russell (UMKC) in the forthcoming treatise on ethics and complex litigation, edited by Joshua Davis (U.C. San Fran). This chapter focuses on how the work of those formerly known as “special masters” crosses many disciplines, thus leaving significant questions regarding the proper ethical guidance for those neutrals.
  • Authored the chapter Federal Court Jurisdiction for Arbitration Matters: A Complex Problem with an Easy Solution for the forthcoming book The Federal Arbitration Act: Successes, Failures, and a Roadmap for Reform by Richard Bales (Ohio Northern) and Jill Gross (Pace).

Jack J. Coe, Jr. (Pepperdine Caruso Law)

The Singapore Conventions Null and Void Refusal Ground and Related Matters, in Reflections on International Arbitration in ESSAYS IN HONOR PROFESSOR GEORGE BERMANN (2022). RESTATEMENT OF THE LAW, THE U.S. LAW OF INTERNATIONAL COMMERCIAL AND INVESTOR-STATE ARBITRATION (Associate Reporter), (two-volume hard bound text 2023). Touring the Americas on a Frigate – Classroom Conversations Inspired by Northrop Grumman Ship Systems versus the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Venezuela, ___ N.Y.U.J. L. & POL___ (forthcoming summer 20224). International Arbitral Awards in U.S. Federal Courts: An Empirical Study, ___ VA J. INT’L L.__(forthcoming summer 2024)(with C. Drahozal, D. Childress, & C. Rogers). Work In Progress: Non-ICSID Convention Awards in National Courts, HAGUE ACADEMY LECTURES, Summer 2024.

Sarah Cole (Ohio State Law)

In 2024, I’m looking forward to celebrating the FAA’s 100th birthday and was happy to contribute two chapters to the following book, edited by Jill Gross and Rick Bales –The Federal Arbitration Act: Successes, Failures, and a Roadmap for Reform (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2024). I wrote Chapter 21: Revising the Reviewing: Amending FAA Section 10 to Improve Procedural Protections in Employment Arbitration and Chapter 27: Reinvigorating the Arbitration Process By Diversifying the Arbitrator Corps. I’m also excited to report that Oxford University Press has green-lighted the second volume of Discussions in Dispute Resolution: The Coming of Age, which I co-edit with the wonderful Art Hinshaw and Andrea Schneider.  We will be hard at work over the next year, editing the selected articles and comments on those articles for the book, which will be published hopefully in late 2024 or early 2025.  I’m also happy to be involved in working on the $1.3 million dollar grant that the Moritz Divided Community Project received from the Department of Justice, entitled “Convening Divided Communities in Dialogue”.  Please check out https://moritzlaw.osu.edu/faculty-and-research/divided-community-project for all the other incredible work DCP is doing.

Hossein Fazilatfar (Creighton Law)

Arbitration and the Mandatory Law Problem:

A Mixed Mode ADR Approach

Arbitrators’ contractual source of authority and commitments to the parties, their mandate to issue an enforceable award, and imperative nature of mandatory laws at stake make determination of the applicable law a dilemma in arbitration. Proposed solutions thus far have mostly revolved around suggestions that are based on either the contractual concerns of the parties, jurisdictional concerns of states involved or a mix of the two extreme ends. This Article suggests a new and different procedural mechanism for this substantive law problem: a multitier alternative dispute resolution approach. An Arb-Med-Arb mechanism allows the arbitrator to switch hats between arbitration and mediation and with active participation of the parties make appropriate arrangements on a case-by-case basis that respond to both contractual and jurisdictional aspects of the case.

Clause Expansion

Enforcement of a new generation of arbitration agreements with ultra-expansive language has divided federal courts. Agreements that if enforced to full extent access to courts will be limited through arbitrary party-consent. Recently, the Fourth, the Ninth, and the Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals have coped with the issue, yet inconsistently. Some courts by considering the preemptive effect of the FAA and with overreaching employment of the federal policy favoring arbitration have found these arbitration agreements valid. Others, by relying on state contract law principles, have found such clauses invalid. This Article is focused on the expansive reach of these agreements in terms of coverage and their enforceability. It addresses Clause Expansion under the Federal Arbitration Act, current lower court precedent, the circuit split, and how the Supreme Court might treat such agreements with interpretive tools at its disposal. It later argues that despite calls over enforcing the statutory limitation of Section 2 of the FAA – which allegedly merely gives effect to agreements that “arise out of” the container contract or transaction – may not have a purchase at the Supreme Court. The Article alternatively suggests that courts should treat scope issues at formation where the pro-arbitration policy is inapplicable.

Elayne Greenberg (St. John’s Law)

An Unspoken Truth – The Cost of Muzzling Employees’ Personal Opinions

An unspoken truth is that employers are retaliating against employees for expressing personal opinions about work and life during the employee’s own free time even though the employees believed those opinions were protected free speech rights. This article alerts readers to this worsening problem and challenges us to reconsider what, if any, modifications should be made to  align the current legal boundaries and organizational policies with the actual value of having employees free to express their personal opinions.

Tim Hedeen (Kennesaw State)

Tim Hedeen will reprise the annual survey of organizational ombuds practice for the International Ombuds Association, where colleague Ellen Miller serves as Executive Director. This survey represents the most comprehensive study of contemporary ombuds practice each year, and is a collaboration alongside Mary Rowe (MIT), Jennifer Schneider (USF), and Hector Escalante (UC-Merced).

Tim will also continue his evaluation of the Resolutionary Partners project, delivered by Tricia Jones and colleagues at Temple University through support from the BJA/DOJ STOP School Violence Program. The project provides comprehensive and innovative violence prevention in schools serving at-risk and systems-involved youth from high-violence, high-poverty and high-trauma communities in Philadelphia.

Charlie Irvine is Senior Teaching Fellow at University of Strathclyde Law School, Glasgow, Scotland, and Director of Strathclyde Mediation Clinic.  He has just completed his doctoral thesis examining lay people’s perspective on justice in mediation; Barbara Wilson is Visiting Lecturer at University of Strathclyde and a family mediator in England.  She writes extensively on mediation theory and practice; Jo Saunders is Senior Lecturer at the School of Psychological Science and Health, University of Strathclyde. 

Irvine, C, Wilson, B & Saunders J, Mediators and the Trait of Sensory Processing Sensitivity: Study Reveals a Significant Correlation, Mediation Theory and PracticeVol 7 (1) 57-80 (2023). 

This Article is available on SSRN by clicking here.

Abstract 

Are mediators born or made? Is there such a thing as a ‘natural mediator?’ Bowling and Hoffman’s influential collection, ‘Bringing Peace into the Room,’ considers: ‘How the personal qualities of the mediator impact the process of conflict resolution.’ These questions are troubling for practitioners and educators. Does training matter, or are such qualities, or traits, innate? Are some individuals drawn to conflict resolution work because they already possess these qualities? Or because they seek them? 

This article contributes to the debate by reporting on a study into the prevalence of a particular trait, sensory processing sensitivity, in a sample of 181 English-speaking mediators. We became interested in this trait after being described as ‘over-sensitive’ or ‘thin-skinned’ and discovering Elaine Aron’s writing on the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). Aron claims such individuals tend to extract more data from situations than the average population; are more than usually sensitive to emotions; and their preferred style of interacting is ‘pause and reflect.’  These qualities may be particularly useful for mediation work, though there is a downside: the tendency to become overwhelmed and consequent need to withdraw.  

We set out to investigate whether a sample of practising mediators was more, or less, likely to be high in sensory processing sensitivity than the average population.  We found that our sample was significantly more likely to be HSP. We discuss the implications for training and practice, and our understanding of the skills and qualities mediators require. 

John Lande (University of Missouri Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution)

I have developed the Real Practice Systems (RPS) Project.  Mediators’ systems involve categories they develop to design routine procedures and strategies for dealing with recurring challenges before, during, and after mediation sessions.  RPS theory involves practitioners’ personal histories, values, goals, motivations, knowledge, and skills as well as the parties and the cases in their work.  Although this project has focused mostly on mediation, RPS theory can be applied to other regular processes of dispute resolution and lawyering.

RPS Project Menu of Mediation Checklists:  These detailed checklists include:

  •            general information about mediators
  •            compliance with ethical requirements
  •            tasks before mediation sessions
  •            tasks during mediation sessions
  •            improvement of techniques

Real Practice Systems Project Annotated Bibliography:  Publications provide theoretical and practical explanations of RPS theory, including:

  •            an overview of RPS theory
  •            critiques of traditional dispute resolution theories
  •            promotion of party decision-making
  •            litigation interest and risk assessment
  •            preparation for mediation sessions
  •            technology systems
  •            planned early dispute resolution
  •            dispute system design
  •            applications in court systems
  •            applications in legal education

Here are some unpublished articles:

Numerous posts on Indisputably, some of which are described in the RPS bibliography.  Here are some others:

Collections of materials:

David Larson (Mitchell Hamline Law)

(1) Here is an article that was just published in Vol. 39, No. 1 (2023) of the Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution titled “Crossing the Cultural Chasm and the Power of Listening: How We Wrote a New Tenure Code.” To download the article from SSRN, click here. Here is the abstract of the piece:

Revising the Tenure Code of an institution of higher learning may be among the most challenging of the processes it undertakes, especially when there is a commitment to shared governance by its Board of Trustees and Faculty. At Mitchell Hamline School of Law, we recently experienced this process – both difficult and ultimately satisfying – following the combination of two law schools. In 2016, Mitchell Hamline School of Law became an independent institution formed through the combination of independent William Mitchell College of Law and Hamline School of Law, a school of Hamline University, both based in St. Paul, Minnesota. In the early years, implementing the combination agreement consumed trustee and faculty attention, requiring significant work that included integrating faculty from each school, organizing administrative structure, filling staff positions, adding staff where necessary, and creating annual and capital budgets.

Numerous challenges had to be addressed immediately following the combination. A critical one was determining the Tenure Code to be used for the new school. At the time of the combination, each school had its own Tenure Code, but neither one was seen as appropriate for the new law school. There was a strong belief that the William Mitchell Tenure Code created a severe imbalance of governance and authority between the Faculty and Trustees. But because of the new law school’s location in the William Mitchell building, we thought we could use the William Mitchell Tenure Code temporarily, merely as a placeholder. No one imagined it would be in place for the next six and a half years. In hindsight, no one should have been surprised that the shortcomings of the original William Mitchell Tenure Code would become increasingly obvious and frustrating for the faculty of the new Mitchell Hamline School of Law.

While each school considering a tenure code revision will face unique issues, the Mitchell Hamline School of Law experience confirms that when shared governance is the foundation of the tenure code review process, trust can be built, issues can be resolved, and a new tenure code can be unanimously adopted by the Faculty and the Board of Trustees. 

(2) I also just completed an article for the New York Dispute Resolution Lawyer titled “Resolving Disputes Online? Ensure Your Services Are Disability Accessible.” The article explains that digital accessibility for persons with disabilities is a human right, will expand your customer base by not merely assisting persons with disabilities, and may protect you from liability under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The article has been accepted for publication.  

Ariana Levinson (Univ. of Louisville Law)

Early stage research project: This paper explores how union negotiations in worker-owned co-ops compare to more traditional labor negotiations.  Are co-op labor negotiations more similar to the interest-based win-win negotiation framework popularized by Getting to Yes than traditional labor negotiations? If they are, what are the potential advantages and disadvantages of this type of negotiations compared to traditional negotiations? Do co-op labor negotiations address some of the grand challenges of this historical time, such as climate change, technological advance like AI, and the rise of patriarchy, racism, and fascism, in similar or different ways than traditional negotiations?

Archana Medhekar (Certified Family Law specialist and Family Mediator-Arbitrator)

Here is a link to the online version of my co-authored interdisciplinary research publication from Canada, Breaking the Silence: The Untold Journeys of Racialized Immigrant Youth through Family Violence (click here for the online version).

Book co-authors:

Purnima George, Toronto Metropolitan University
Archana Medhekar, Archana Medhekar Professional Corporation
Bethany Osborne, Sheridan College
Ferzana Chaze, Sheridan College
Karen Cove, Toronto Metropolitan University
Sophia Schmitz, Toronto Metropolitan University

Description

Intended to fill the existing gap in knowledge, the book, “Breaking the silence: The untold journeys of racialized immigrant youth through family violence,” is a Phenomenological research study that sheds light on the experiences and agency of twelve racialized immigrant youths as they navigated family violence in their childhood. By bringing together theoretical frameworks, such as Anti-Colonialism, Critical Race Theory, A rights Based approach to children and Anti-Oppressive practice, with concepts of the Best Interest of the Child and Coercive Control, the book provides an insight into the impacts of family violence and how these experiences are complicated by systemic violence in case of racialized immigrant children. The book provides a way forward for the Justice sector to broaden the concept of the best interest of the child and recognize systemic violence in family violence matters. A unique contribution of the book is the participants’ recommendations that call for transforming practices of sectors that address family violence along with work with communities and individuals.

Carrie Menkel-Meadow (UCI Law)

Carrie Menkel-Meadow , University of California, Irvine spent the fall 2023 term (Michaelmas) as a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Socio-legal Studies at Oxford University where she worked on a number of projects including: an article, “Is Socio-legal Studies a Science?” and completion of a book manuscript, International Dispute Resolution (with Andrea Kufper Schneider, forthcoming Carolina Press, 2024).  She completed a chapter, “Dispute Resolution as Civil Justice,” for the Elgar Research Handbook on Civil Justice (edited by Richard Jolly, Anne Bloom and David Engel, due out  next year). She also completed a short essay on “conflict resolution” for the Encyclopedia of Law and Peace (edited by Louise Mellender).

She is currently completing work on a book chapter on “Multi-stake Mediation” in environmental issues for Fairness and Compliance in Public Participation (edited by Ortwin Renn and Thomas Webler), and another book chapter for the Elgar Research Handbook on the Sociology of Legal Ethics (Scott Cummings, editor) on “Scarlett Letters for Lawyers: Accountability for Representation.”

This fall she was honored with the ADR Hall of Fame Award by the California Lawyer’s Litigation Section.  She gave the plenary address at the UC Law SF (formerly UC Hastings) conference on “Diversity and Inclusion in ADR: Reimagining Our Field” on November 3. She was the speaker for the Monthly Breakfast Roundtable for the New York ADR community (on Zoom from Oxford) on “Where Have all the Flowers Gone: A look back and forward for mediation and dispute resolution” and she lectured on socio-legal studies issues and methods at Oxford’s Centre for Socio-legal Studies.

Michael Moffitt (Oregon Law)

“Bespoke ADR Ethics: The Case of Superfund Neutral Allocators”

Process pluralism is now the norm within ADR. Four decades ago, Professor Frank Sander was considered a revolutionary pioneer for proposing that one could imagine disputes being routed, in a multi-door courthouse, to one of three or four different dispute resolution processes. Today, there are dozens, if not hundreds of different processes available to disputants in different contexts. Two decades ago, Professor Carrie Menkel-Meadow coined the phrase “process pluralism” to capture the phenomenon, and since then, the number of process options has only expanded.

Have dispute resolution ethics kept up with the rapid development of process variations? Most articulations of ethics for ADR processes derive fundamentally from the established norms of either mediation or arbitration. Are ADR processes really just variations on these two themes? Or is there a foundational conception of dispute resolution ethics from which one could derive appropriate ethical directives for processes beyond mediation and arbitration?

My instinct is that one can find such directive through the lens of party consent. I use the case of Neutral Allocators in CERCLA superfund cases as a springboard for imagining the need for (and boundaries of) this exploration.

CERCLA is, in some respects, an ideal context for testing boundaries. Superfund cases operate in a legal and political structure that is uncommon, if not unique. Baked into CERCLA are powerful incentives designed to promote settlement. The law also establishes a formal/informal role for third parties who may, in some cases, be brought in to assist the potentially responsible parties to find settlement terms. The structure of that Neutral Allocator role, however, may stand in tension with some of ADR’s foundational ethical principles, in certain contexts. Perhaps they are simply poorly designed intervention roles. Or perhaps ADR ethics are not the right lens through which to examine Neutral Allocators. But perhaps the roles are perfectly ethically unobjectionable and instead represent an opportunity for ADR scholars to examine critically some of the ethical precepts the field has taken for granted. ADR ethics have not necessarily kept pace with the evolutions of process pluralism.

Jackie Nolan-Haley (Fordham Law)

Jacqueline Nolan-Haley, Reflection, Deliberation, and Dialogue: Stipanowich’s Contribution to Dispute Resolution, 10 Texas A & M Law Review (2023)

Jacqueline Nolan-Haley, The Legacy of the Troubles: Casting a Long Shadow over Northern Ireland, Harvard Negotiation Law Review (forthcoming).

Amy J. Schmitz (Ohio State Law) has been working on a new book The Arbitration Conversation: Insights and Wisdom from Experts in the Field (American Bar Association forthcoming 2024), and several book chapters and an article:

  • Picking the Proper Problem-Solving Tool in Arbitration, ArbMetaBlock (Full title tba), (Maud Piers & Sean McCarthy editors, forthcoming 2024).
  • Updating FAA Section 7 for the Digital Age, THE FEDERAL ARBITRATION ACT: SUCCESSES, FAILURES, AND A ROADMAP FOR REFORM (Richard A. Bales & Jill I. Gross, editors, forthcoming 2024 Cambridge University Press).
  • Evolution and Emerging Issues in Consumer ODR, THE CAMBRIDGE handbook on Emerging Issues at the Intersection of Commercial Law and Technology (Cambridge forthcoming 2024, Edited by Nancy Kim).
  • Resolving NFT Disputes, The Cambridge handbook on the law and policy of NFTs (Cambridge forthcoming 2024).
  • Resolving Blockchain and NFT Disputes, 6 Stanford Journal on Blockchain Law and Policy 1 (2023).
  • Inaugural Keynote, Technology and Dispute Resolution, United Nations International Training Center, Torino, Italy (presented online), Nov. 22 (2023).
  • Emergence and Evolution of OArb, Cyberweek 2023, Nov. 10 (2023).
  • Moderator and Organizer, AI to Assist Landlord/Tenant Dispute Resolution, Cyberweek 2023, Nov. 9 (2023).
  • ODR in Action, Tech Meets Law Series, Radboud University, Netherlands, Oct. 4 (2023).
  • Using Systems Thinking for Dispute Prevention and Resolution, Boulder, CO, Sept. 29 (2023).
  • Opening a Virtual Window in Criminal Courts, Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution (CJCR) Melnick Symposium, “The Future of the Criminal Legal System: How Should a Multidoor Criminal Courthouse Operate,” Oct. 27 (2023).
  • Ethical Issues Around AI in Mediation, ABA’s 20th Annual Advanced Mediation and Advocacy Skills Institute, Oct. 18-19 (2023).
  • FUN-damental Rights, Think Tech Hawaii, online, Nov. 19, 2023.
  • Special Event, AI and Dispute Resolution, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, Nov. 6, 2023.
  • Using Technology to Expand Access to Justice in Criminal Law, Dispute Resolution Works in Progress Conference, Yale and Quinnipiac Universities, New Haven, CT, Oct. 14, 2023.
  • The Duty of “Technological Competence” and ODR, 2023 International ODR Forum, Cyberjustice Laboratory, University of Montreal, Canada, Oct. 10 – 13, 2023.
  • AI & Data Analytics in the Courts: Promise and Pitfalls, Plenary Speaker, Ohio Judicial Conference, Columbus, OH, September 14, 2023.
  • AI and Dispute Resolution Primer, Ohio State Bar Association, Columbus, OH, September 13, 2023.
  • Responsible Use of AI in Dispute Resolution, Keynote, Association of Conflict Resolution Annual Conference, George Mason University, Arlington, VA, Oct. 4, 2023.

Andrea Kupfer Schneider (Cardozo Law)

My scholarship projects this next semester include finishing a draft of an International Conflict Resolution textbook with Carrie Menkel-Meadow (yay!); working on the next edition of the Discussions in Dispute Resolution: The Coming of Age with Sarah Cole and Art Hinshaw; and starting to draft up an article, Against Negotiation, about how individual negotiations should/could be limited in the workplace to ensure more equity.  

Sukhsimranjit Singh (Pepperdine Caruso Law)


Dr. Singh published an article in the Los Angeles Daily Journal on “Cross-Border Conflicts: Mediating Across Cultures.” The article addresses the ways in which mediation may be used to help solve seemingly intractable cross-cultural disputes. He hosted the Federal Judicial Center for a three day Mediation Workshop and travelled to Kigali, Africa to train Rwanda Judiciary in Advanced Mediation. Based on the success of hosting an international conference on law enformcent, Singh is finishing an article on Law Enforcement and Trust Building and hopes to publish it in Spring 2024.

Stephen Ware (Kansas Law)

I’m currently writing an article on arbitration agreements in bankruptcy.

Maureen Weston (Pepperdine Caruso Law)

Weston’s recent scholarly activities include publications on:

  • State Arbitration Law in a FAA Preemption World: The Interaction Between Federal and State Arbitration Law, in The Federal Arbitration Act: Successes, Failures, and a Roadmap for Reform, Richard A. Bales & Jill I. Gross, Cambridge University Press (2024);
  • Breaking Cultural and Financial Barriers in Olympic Sports, 26 Vanderbilt J. Ent. & Tech. Law 101 (2024).   

She also coauthored Sports Law for Sport Management  (Carolina Press 2024), a new casebook focused on teaching sports law and dispute resolution to undergraduate sport management students. The book addresses the evolving changes in the legal landscape of college sports, including name-image-likeness (NIL) legislation, antitrust, labor, Title IX, as well as a range of issues in professional and international sports. Weston is also a long-time coauthor on the leading sports law casebook, with its 10th edition forthcoming 2024, with Carolina Academic Press. In October she presented “Arbitrating Sports (Washing), Politics, and Human Rights: Who Decides?” at the 2023 AALS Alternative Dispute Resolution Works-in-Progress Conference hosted by Yale Law School and Quinnipiac University School of Law, as well as talks on “Sports Arbitration” for Georgia State University Law, and on “Name Image Likeness and the Student Athlete Influencer in College Sports” at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, and Texas A&M Law School Symposium on College Sports. 

Helen Winter (Pepperdine Caruso Law)

In May Helen Winter (LLM ’17) joined Pepperdine Caruso School of Law and the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution as an assistant professor of law and practice. Winter’s work, through her nonprofit, R3SOLUTE, has been recognized for empowering refugee and local communities to manage and prevent conflicts through education and peer mediation. Her Ph.D. thesis addresses peer mediation in refugee shelters as a vehicle for self-efficacy.  In June Winter presented on this topic at the Association for Conflict Resolution, Greater New York’s annual conference. Her articlewith David Hoffman, “Follow the Science: Proven Strategies for Reducing Unconscious Bias,” was recently published in the Harvard Negotiation Law Review, and she spoke about reducing bias at Harvard Law School’s LLM Orientation in August.

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