The New York Times published an interesting article worth reading, which riffs on Mark Zuckerberg’s statement that Facebook would develop an independent body to make decisions about acceptability of posts on its platform. He mused that the body might be like a supreme court to make final decisions reflecting global social norms. The article was … Continue reading Dispute System Design for Facebook
The Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program launched its new podcast Thanks for Listening! Here’s their description: This podcast will spotlight efforts to bridge the political divide in the U.S. through dialogue and collaborative processes, profiling the important and often courageous work of individuals and organizations who are helping citizens engage with one another on … Continue reading New Podcast: Thanks for Listening!
Over the past year, we have witnessed growing evidence of the massive failures of our legal system to deal properly with a rampant system in which powerful men sexually dominate others, especially women. This post describes the nature, magnitude, and consequences of a long-term history of criminal and civil sexual offenses in the US and … Continue reading How Can We Fix Legal System Failures to Properly Handle Sexual Offenses?
Yesterday, Jen wrote an insightful post analyzing Judge Kavanaugh’s problematic apology to Senator Klobuchar. Interestingly, he committed the same offense with Senator Whitehouse – arrogantly responding to a question about his drinking by asking the senator about his drinking – but didn’t apologize to him. This post provides a few more observations about this remarkable … Continue reading More Observations about the Kavanaugh Hearing
Like millions of others, I got hooked on the Serial podcasts. The first season told the story of a real-life whodunit, examining the trial of a young man convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend. The second season focused on Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier who left his base in Afghanistan and was held captive by the Taliban … Continue reading Serial Podcast Examines the Criminal Justice System
Probably like many readers of this blog, I have been very uncomfortable with our highly polarized politics lately. I have written about my conflicted feelings about how to deal with these issues, including this article, How Can We Build Common Ground Between Bubbles? Clearly, it is counterproductive to try to build common ground with people … Continue reading Building Political Common Ground
Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former Trump White House aide, just published a tell-all book and the Trump campaign filed an arbitration action alleging that she broke a 2016 confidentiality agreement. According to this Washington Post article, “Initially, [White House Counsel Donald] McGahn told Trump he would not draft or give aides the [non-disclosure agreements] because … Continue reading Use of Arbitration Agreement to Silence Omarosa
The trial of Paul Manafort, which is scheduled to begin tomorrow, is a good illustration of an important value of trials. A decade ago, there was a flurry of academic activity following the publication of Prof. Marc Galanter’s detailed 2004 study entitled, The Vanishing Trial: An Examination of Trials and Related Matters in Federal and State … Continue reading In Praise of a Trial
Ben Trachtenberg, one of the sharpest faculty at my school, wrote this outstanding article analyzing what went wrong during the highly-publicized controversies at the University of Missouri in 2015. Having lived through this painful conflict, Ben’s account seems extremely accurate – and brings up a lot of sad memories for me, reminding me of things … Continue reading A Case Study of Murphy’s Law in Missouri
President Trump is scheduled to have a summit meeting with Russian President Putin on Monday. The timing of this meeting right after the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officials demonstrates the bizarre political situation we are in. Mr. Trump seeks a close relationship with a foreign leader whose top spies systematically interfered in our elections … Continue reading How Should ADR Folks Participate in a Grand Real-Time Negotiation?
