Peter Reilly’s call for updates on our scholarship prompted me to create the following lists of short articles and blog posts I wrote this year. You might want to read some or see if any would fit into your syllabi as required or recommended readings addressing your teaching goals. The following pieces focus directly on … Continue reading Short Pieces You Might Want to Read
To resolve a dispute, one or more people need to change their minds. Negotiation and mediation involve techniques to help people do just that. Obviously, this can be very difficult. People have reasons for their positions and they may not change them easily. This post focuses on two approaches for changing minds, which are highlighted … Continue reading What I’m Reading – Changing Minds
People in every demographic group and every part of the country became hooked on powerful drugs. Many lost their jobs, savings, homes, and families and they became ensnared in the criminal justice system. Hundreds of thousands died from drug overdoses. Communities were decimated. The drug pushers were protected by high-powered lawyers like Mary Jo White, … Continue reading What I’m Reading – High-Powered Lawyers Protecting a Ruthless Drug-Dealing Mob
It’s a damn miracle that people ever understand each other. A recent episode of the This American Life podcast provides ample illustration. Entitled, What We’ve Got Here is Failure to Communicate, the podcast tells several, mostly discouraging, stories. (Click here for the source of this phrase.) One story describes special challenges due to the covid … Continue reading What I’m Reading – What We’ve Got Here is Failure to Communicate
War is the worst method of dispute resolution. In war, combatants and civilians are killed and injured, physical and social infrastructure is destroyed, and individuals and societies are traumatized, resulting in harms that can continue long after wars are declared to be over. People often use the term “collateral damage” referring to death and injury … Continue reading What I’m Reading – Collateral Damage of War
Legal academics and practitioners are professional feedback givers and receivers. Of course, faculty constantly give feedback to students – and also to colleagues. Faculty are frequently evaluated for hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions as well as about their publications and presentations, funding requests, and lots of other things. Practitioners regularly provide clients with feedback, often … Continue reading What I’m Reading – Thanks for the Feedback
I learned a lot about William Randolph Hearst by watching the PBS American Experience documentary about him. He is best known as a purveyor of “yellow journalism,” promoter of the Spanish-American War, and the target of the Orson Welles film, Citizen Kane. The documentary shows that he has had a huge and continuing impact on … Continue reading What I’m Reading – PBS Documentary on William Randolph Hearst
“Facebook is like a pocketknife: You can use it to peel an apple or stab a janitor at school.” So said tech analyst (and talk-show host) Jimmy Kimmel. Noam Ebner (not a talk-show host) wrote, “Its positive characteristics and opportunities notwithstanding, the Internet has become something similar to a bad neighborhood after dark. … Even … Continue reading What I’m Reading – The Social Dilemma
ODR is likely to be an increasingly important part of legal and dispute resolution processes in the future, with potential benefits and risks. It particularly has great potential to help self-represented litigants (SRLs, aka “pro se” parties). So I was interested to read an article by my colleague, Amy Schmitz, and John Zeleznikow, Intelligent Legal … Continue reading Constructing Good ODR Systems
Who’d expect Netflix to produce a movie about dispute system design? Or that it would be really good? Its docudrama, Worth, about the process of designing and implementing the 9/11 Victims’ Compensation Fund, actually is terrific. (Note that this What-I’m-Reading series isn’t limited to just reading stuff.) It is based on Kenneth Feinberg’s book, What … Continue reading What I’m Reading – Worth
