Susan Franck has sent along this conference announcement for what looks like a really wonderful opportunity.  The Institute for Transnational Arbitration – which is one of the leading institutes for the education and promotion of international arbitration in the world – is holding its First Annual Winter Forum this February in San Francisco. As Susan writes, … Continue reading Conference at the Institute for Transnational Arbitration →

 I am delighted to post  this  guest post  courtesy of Brian Pappas: The summer of 2012 was an interesting one for our negotiator-in-chief.  On July 13th, a Politico article (“President Obama abruptly walks out of debt ceiling talks “) describes a president willing to use both integrative (collaborative) and distributive (competitive) negotiation tactics.  On the … Continue reading As Negotiator-in-Chief, Obama Needs to Better Manage his BATNA →

Sean Nolon (U. Vermont) recently published an article related to environmental conflict resolution.  In the article, Sean describes how different forms of consensus-building can be used to site wind turbines and create wind energy policy.  A link to the article on SSRN is here.  It is entitled Negotiating the Wind: A Framework to Engage Citizens in … Continue reading ADR, Consensus-Building and Wind Energy Policy →

Just as I am beginning to settle back into my bourgeois American lifestyle, I wake up this morning to find this article in the Times on a Ghanaian chief who spends most of his year in New York overseeing a taxi operation with his wife. While in Ghana last week, I had the opportunity to … Continue reading Customary Arbitration in an Evolving Africa →

Yesterday the ABA adopted a tepid resolution encouraging law schools to, perhaps, if they want to, give their students more training for the actual practice of law by developing “capstone” courses and clinics. Unfortunately, the resolution expressly states only that these courses should provide students with “client contact” (which is good) and “court appearances” (which … Continue reading ABA Adopts Resolution on Skills Training →

In the upcoming term, the US Supreme Court will hear a pair of appeals from criminal defendants who allege that they did not have competent assistance of counsel during plea bargaining. In one case, Lafler v. Cooper, the defendant states that he rejected a plea offer after his lawyer misunderstood the law and gave him … Continue reading Plea Bargains and Competent Assistance of Counsel →

We received the sad news yesterday that former New York Governor Hugh Carey, generous benefactor of the Hugh L. Carey Center for Dispute Resolution at St. John’s School of Law, passed away.  Governor Carey had had a long-standing ambition to create a center for dispute resolution at St. John’s when I founded the Carey Center … Continue reading Hugh L. Carey, 1919-2011 →

I recently read an article that nicely brings together advice about teaching law school courses from neuroscience and psychology. The article is: Deepening The Discourse Using The Legal Mind’s Eye: Lessons from Neuroscience and Psychology that Optimize Law School Learning by Hillary Burgess, 29 Quinnipiac L. Rev. 1 (2011). The article summarizes the research on … Continue reading Visual aids and memory →

Thanks to the Securities Arbitration Commentator’s Arbitration Alert service, I recently learned that the New York State Legislature is considering legislation to amend New York’s arbitration law to add a specific bias ground for vacatur.  The bill already passed through the State Assembly as A7002A-2011, and has now been introduced in the State Senate as … Continue reading New York State Legislature Considers Adding Vacatur Ground →