TPKATVT is back. It actually hadn’t gone away, though I hadn’t seen signs of it for a while. TPKATVT, aka The Phenomenon Known as the Vanishing Trial, got started by a 2004 report written by Professor Marc Galanter, The Vanishing Trial: An Examination of Trials and Related Matters in Federal and State Courts. Each year … Continue reading TPKATVT
This week I gave a talk by skype to EFOI Elayne Greenberg’s Dispute System Design Seminar through St. John’s Hon. Hugh L. Carey Center for Dispute Resolution. This year-long honors seminar is described as follows. “The 3L Carey Center Fellows in the seminar use a textbook, and explore real-life examples, that introduce the core elements … Continue reading Presentation at St. John’s DSD Seminar on Overcoming Barriers to Implementation of PEDR Systems
We have such an incredible group of people in our community doing wonderful work in so many different areas. Forty years ago, at the 1976 Pound Conference, Frank Sander proposed the multi-door courthouse. Before then, mediation and arbitration had been widely used in the labor context for decades but there wasn’t much else going on … Continue reading Global Pound Conference, Papal Encyclical on the Environment, and Cyberweek
In June, John Kiernan gave a talk in which he argued that the ADR field has reached a first level of maturity but “ADR remains far short of its full, what might be called ‘level two maturity.’” He gave the talk at a luncheon of Association for Conflict Resolution of Greater New York, where he … Continue reading How to Reach “Level Two Maturity” in Handling Civil Disputes
It seems that there are a lot of stories about questionable apologies in the news lately. I don’t intend to discuss all of them, but here are a few more thoughts about some of them. 21st Century Fox First, some updates about the 21st Century Fox apology. I thought it was bland but some commentators, … Continue reading Non-Apology Apologies, Part 2
My friend, Lisa Renee Pomerantz, a New York lawyer and neutral, wrote an article on consumer arbitration in ACResolution that you might want to check out. It chronicles a history of efforts to regulate and improve consumer arbitration, leading up to the recent study and proposed rules issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It … Continue reading Pomerantz and DR Section on Consumer Arbitration
One might assume that using a “planned early dispute resolution” (PEDR) system should be a “no-brainer” for businesses that regularly litigate because litigation-as-usual undermines many business interests such as efficiency, protection of reputations and relationships, control of disputing and business operations generally, and risk management, among others. Although this seems like a plausible assumption, the … Continue reading A No-Brainer?
Alert readers of this blog will recall that amendments of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure went into effect on Dec. 1, 2015, including a new requirement that discovery be “proportional to the needs of the case.” The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) thinks that’s a good thing. Critics, like … Continue reading Is Proportionality of Discovery Good or Bad?
Here’s an account of the negotiations leading up to the international climate change agreement. Apparently, there was an accidental change of the word “should” to “shall” in one passage, which almost sunk the deal. A lesson to law students and lawyers everywhere. The story of this extremely complex negotiation really is fascinating, especially following the … Continue reading One Word
I recently posted an item citing the IAALS’s work touting the benefits of the new amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. For a counterpoint, here’s a draft article by SMU Professor Elizabeth G. Thornburg, Cognitive Bias, the ‘Band of Experts,’ and the Anti-Litigation Narrative. Here’s the abstract: In December of 2015, yet another … Continue reading Another View of the New FRCP Rules
