Lisa Blomgren Amsler (formerly Bingham) at Indiana. Big congratulations for an award well deserved. The award will be presented during the Legal Educators’ Luncheon at the ABA DR Section meetings in Miami in April. The announcement in its entirety is below.
Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work to Lisa Blomgren Amsler
Professor Lisa Blomgren Amsler (formerly Bingham) has been selected as the recipient of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution’s Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work. This award honors individuals whose scholarship has significantly contributed to the dispute resolution field.
Lisa Blomgren Amsler is the Keller-Runden Professor of Public Service at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Bloomington, Indiana. She has co-edited three books and authored over 88 articles and book chapters on dispute resolution, dispute system design and collaborative governance. Before entering academia, Amsler practiced law for ten years and was a partner at Shipman and Goodwin in Hartford, Connecticut.
Professor Amsler’s scholarship has played a foundational role in the field of dispute resolution. Her scholarship has been prolific, broad, and influential. Her work has covered a range of processes (including arbitration, mediation, ombuds, deliberative democracy, dispute system design, and collaborative governance), and practice areas (including government, employment and labor, community, commercial, and environmental). Her scholarship has been interdisciplinary, reaching into other fields beyond law such as public policy and social science.
Her scholarship has been highly relevant in both the US and abroad. In the US, her work on public engagement has helped local, state and federal agencies develop processes for citizen involvement. Abroad, her work has helped developing nations deal with the challenges of social and political inclusion.
One of Lisa Blomgren Amsler’s earlier studies, an empirical study of arbitration first revealed the differential results for repeat players — and the positive effects of enforcing protocols. Similarly, her empirical work on institutionalized mediation first revealed the important procedural justice-related role played by the other party, the potential effects on managers, who learned the importance of listening, and institutions’ ability to design dispute systems to enhance less powerful parties’ ability to exercise self-determination in determining whether to use mediation or another process.
Professor Amsler has mentored dispute resolution scholars and practitioners, published widely, organized special journal issues on dispute resolution topics, and participated in the often-thankless job of organizing national gatherings. These efforts have contributed greatly to the discourse between scholars in the field.
Professor Amsler’s scholarship has helped us expand our horizons in private and public dispute resolution and more broadly in dispute systems design and collaborative governance.
The award will be presented to Lisa Blomgren Amsler during the Legal Educator’s Colloquium Luncheon at the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution Spring Conference in Miami, FL on Saturday, April 5, 2014. Tickets for the Colloquium Luncheon can be purchased on the Spring Conference web site.
