Our field aspires to promote restorative justice and healing when one person has wronged another. This can truly happen only when the person committing the wrong takes responsibility, typically reflected in an acknowledgment of having done the wrong and an apology. Forgiveness can help people restore themselves as morally acceptable members of society as seen … Continue reading An Example of The Power of Apology and Forgiveness
I have known Forrest (Woody) Mosten for quite a while. He co-authored several articles on collaborative law with me, putting him at risk of tarnishing his stellar reputation. We also co-authored an article, Family Lawyering: Past, Present, and Future. Much more significantly, Woody is known as the “father of unbundling” (as well as being a … Continue reading Mosten and Scully’s New Book on Unbundled Legal Services
Jacqueline N. Font-Guzmán, director of Creighton’s Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Program, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled, Puerto Ricans are Hardly U.S. Citizens. They are Colonial Subjects. It reviews the history of how Puerto Ricans gained US citizenship without self-determination. Click the title of this post to see the link and take a look.
I have written a lot recently about apologies (and non-apologies), most recently a post focusing on Louis C.K.’s apology (which links to prior posts). Today, the New York Times ran a piece entitled “Mea Culpa. Kinda Sorta.” in which several writers parse the language in the apologies of Charlie Rose, Al Franken, Louis C.K., Kevin … Continue reading Mea Culpa. Kinda Sorta.
I just listened to an episode of a This American Life podcast entitled 129 Cars, referring to a car dealership’s monthly sales quota. A team of reporters followed various people at a Long Island dealership for a month and the episode sounds like a sitcom. But it is very real, reflecting tensions in negotiations between … Continue reading Real Car Dealing
Since the recent publications about Harvey Weinstein’s alleged serial sexual misconduct, there has been a wave of stories about others who have allegedly committed sexual misconduct. The comedian Louis C.K. is one of the men who has been accused. He publicly acknowledged that the accusations were true and apologized. Political science professor Nancy D. Wadsworth … Continue reading Louis C.K.’s Apology
As they say, if two people always agree, one of them is unnecessary. It may seem odd that I advocate for more disagreements in a blog named Indisputably. But that’s exactly what I’m doing. Actually, just more good disagreements. Dying Art of Disagreement This post riffs on a column by New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, … Continue reading In Praise of (Good) Disagreements
I was really pleased to meet Randall Kiser at last year’s ABA conference. I was very impressed by his important study (co-authored with Martin Asher and Blakeley McShane), Let’s Not Make a Deal: An Empirical Examination of Decision Making in Unsuccessful Negotiations. The top-line finding was that in 85.5% of cases, parties went to trial … Continue reading Kiser’s Soft Skills for the Effective Lawyer
I write occasionally for the Best Practices in Legal Education blog and I recently posted the following: This post riffs on this post, which describes benefits of formative assessments and suggests some ways to do them. It cites research showing that rewards aren’t sufficient motivation for students to learn and argues that using good formative … Continue reading Challenges in Motivating Law Students to Learn
You may have heard about the new podcast, S-Town, from the producers of This American Life and Serial. They posted all seven chapters last week and, when I couldn’t sleep one night, I binged on it. It is great, IMHO. Mild spoiler alert, so you may want to read no further. The podcast is the … Continue reading S-Town
