Happy New Year everyone! Here is the latest installment of scholarship projects by ADR Profs and practitioners all around the country. Thanks again to Peter Reilly (Texas A&M) for compiling and circulating this impressive list.

Hal Abramson (Touro Law)

Time-Pressured Negotiations 30.2 Harv. Negot. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2025)

This article considers how to negotiate when you do not have the time to use your best negotiation practices.  No other article has considered what to do when in a time-pressured negotiation other than to advise you not to be trapped by a deadline. When you have no choice but to rush, this article examines the choices that will reduce the risks posed by skipping best practices.

This article first considers the inherent risks of taking shortcuts and then describes a negotiation map suitable when not rushed as a guide for selecting shortcuts when rushed. After this introduction, the article moves into its central purpose to examine how to triage when short on time.  The section initially offers two checklists for formulating a triage plan, one that lists the information you need and another one for the plan. The rest of the section examines the five components of a triage plan. They are to build rapport to accelerate the negotiation, act trustworthy throughout, select the best shortcut, multitask by simultaneously using other negotiation techniques, and identify your alternative to a resolution (BATNA) as a safeguard against agreeing to a regrettable outcome. The last section presents four detailed illustrations of how to form and implement a triage plan.

Negotiation Map for Teaching and Practice, 26 Cardozo J of Conflict Resol. (forthcoming 2025)

The article offers a negotiation map for tracking where you are in your negotiation and where you may want to go to reach a resolution. The map is a handy reference when in a fast-moving negotiation and for organizing the teaching of negotiations.  It is based on materials originally developed by the Harvard Negotiation Project.

Erin E. Gleason Alvarez (Gleason Alvarez ADR/Pace Law)

The Gender Sidelining Trap in Mediator Selection, __ Mo. J. Disp. Res. __ (forthcoming 2025).

One of the greatest advantages of commercial mediation is the parties’ ability to construct the process to fit their needs. In mediation, parties are free to make decisions about how the conversation will be structured—whether in person or online, joint session or not, whether negotiations will take place over a few hours or days, and so forth. Perhaps most importantly, parties decide who will serve as the mediator, the person they trust to facilitate their discussions and negotiations, and who is charged with helping them design the bespoke process they require.

On the latter decision point, the way mediators are vetted for a case varies.  Parties often look for a mediator who is a successful negotiator; a good communicator; and a person who can come to the table without conflicts that might get in the way.  Further, a mediator who possesses gravitas—stature in the profession—goes far in assuring parties they can rely on this person to help put their dispute behind them.

Information about mediators’ background, reputation, and experience is often exchanged in a sort of “whisper network,” in which counsel informally chat about mediators whom they like—and who they do not like—and make decisions based on this feedback.  The manner in which a mediator’s credentials come before the whisper network is opaque and continues to be problematic for mediators who possess diverse characteristics.  As further described in my article, the whisper network, predominantly maintained within law firms that are largely controlled by white men, relies on personal networks and established relationships when vetting mediator candidates.

This article will review the ways gender sidelining occurs in the mediator selection process involved in commercial disputes.  By way of background, “gender sidelining” refers to gender-focused behaviors that are not actionable under the law, nor substantial enough on an individual basis to warrant a coordinated response. Gender sidelining of mediators includes instances of lawyers’ unconscious biases in the mediator selection process and other invisible barriers to women’s advancement in the mediation profession. In the aggregate, gender sidelining has a devastating impact on women’s success as mediators.

Gilat Juli Bachar (Temple Law)

Coercive Settlements, 93 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. _ (forthcoming 2025)

Abstract: Can civil settlements be coercive? Conventional wisdom suggests they generally cannot, as the inherent power dynamic of private law is often accepted as inevitable. The media fuels this perception by over-representing stories of lucrative bargained-for settlements and ignoring those offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis by disproportionately powerful defendants. Courts have done the same. Despite the complete lack of judicial oversight of the settlement process, and disadvantaged parties’ limited access to legal representation, courts generally refuse to reopen settlement agreements except in cases of fraud or mutual mistake. And while scholars have extensively addressed coercion in plea bargains, they have not paid much attention to their civil, presumably choice-driven, counterparts.

This Article challenges this view, arguing that some private settlements—which it labels “High-Risk Civil Settlements”—might be coercive. In particular, it contends that acquiescence to a defendant’s demand for silence in exchange for foregoing a legal claim can reflect coercion when additional factors are present, including position of authority or power, information asymmetry, and time pressure. The Article builds on psychological research and philosophical discussion of coercion to show how a plaintiff’s voluntariness can be negated by using subtle methods of social influence. Further, an analogy is drawn between the role of coercion in high-risk civil settlements and in criminal plea bargains. This analogy is then leveraged to propose a concrete list of elements courts should consider when addressing a coercion-based challenge to a high-risk settlement agreement and to suggest recommendations for reform, including a settlement colloquy. Recognizing the coercive power that stronger parties can wield in some private disputes, and the complicit role of courts taking a hands-off approach to civil settlement, this Article urges the legal system to step up to assure these agreements are in fact mutually desirable deals.

Rick Bales (Ohio Northern Law)

Rick is co-editing with Dany Xie (East China University of Political Science and Law), a book tentatively titled Arbitration in China: Building Global Influence in Dispute Resolution (Cambridge University Press, publication anticipated 2026). American contributors include Steve Ware, Shu (Carrie) Shang, and Imre Szalai. Five of the top six global arbitration centers are in China, 72% of all global cases in 2023 were resolved in China, and four of the top five fastest-growing arbitration centers globally are in China. The new book will provide an in-depth analysis of how Chinese arbitration centers have transformed the global landscape of dispute resolution, offering comparative insights, innovative practices, and a forward-looking perspective on their growing influence in international arbitration.

Debra Berman (South Texas College of Law Houston)

I co-authored an article for the Saint Louis University Law Journal’s upcoming issue on Teaching ADR, Mediation, Negotiation, and Client Counseling. The article is entitled Pracademically Speaking: Incorporating Real-World Legal Practice into the Dispute Resolution Curriculum and it will be forthcoming spring 2025.

I authored a comment on John Lande’s 2003 seminal article on collaborative law for Discussions in Dispute Resolution: The Next Generation.

Debra Berman, Collaborative Law: Questioning a Novel Process, Discussions in Dispute Resolution (Volume II): The coming of Age (A. Hinshaw, A. Schneider, and S. Cole eds.) (forthcoming Oxford University Press, 2025).

I am working on a free electronic resource for professors to assign as supplemental reading in mediation classes. It is titled “Mediation Practice Points.” For years, I have gathered responses from interviews our students have had with lawyers about a recent mediation they were involved in (think Stone Soup). The lawyers provided responses about some of the most important mediation issues such as when to mediate, how to select a mediator, pre-mediation memos, preparing the client, preparing the case, preferred format (joint session versus caucus), mediator and lawyer strategies, drafting the MSA, and more. I have compiled these quotes into an easy-to-follow format so students can understand what actually occurs in practice.

As always, I continue to encourage the use of real lawsuits for simulations in classes and competitions. To that end, I selected federal lawsuits for the ABA Representation in Mediation Competition last spring and am doing so again for the 2025 competition. Students in each round mediated actual lawsuits and they received the relevant court documents along with short memoranda detailing confidential notes from their client. For last year’s preliminary round cases, please see:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ryj92wyr9500x3pk0wnn5/General-Instructions-2024.pdf?rlkey=6edv4f89e2earhmiwltndm0ni&st=xnh5wzsi&dl=0

Please reach out if you would like the confidential settlement memos.

Dan Berstein, MHS (MH Mediate) 

Dan is developing a series of new tools to adapt conflict resolution best practices for addressing communication breakdowns and social exclusion.  Building on a dataset Dan received documenting how a leader in one organization had influenced over thirty people to diminish contact with Dan, Dan developed visualizations of the communication barriers using an organizational network analysis (ONA) methodology.  Now he is inviting any dispute resolvers interested in any of the below projects to contact him and collaborate in this work:

  • EDR for Non-Communication– Can we stop communication disparities from escalating into bigger problems? These resources encourage people to recognize when communication barriers are forming and resolve these problems using early dispute resolution (EDR) before they escalate into larger disputes.
  • Power Abuses Toolkit– What can people do when they are receiving pressure to socially exclude someone from someone who is their superior in an organization? And what can the victim do if they are experiencing disparities and exclusion due to folks leveraging power imbalances? This toolkit gives ideas to help parties who are facing communication barriers, insensitivities (including disability-related ones), and violations or deviations from organization policies.
  • Reintegration Resources– Is it possible to come back after people have previously been primed to disparage and exclude someone? In Dan’s case, the organization’s outside counsel encouraged him to try but he was on his own to figure out how.  This sparked a reintegration project that so far has entailed over 10 seemingly positive reconnections, 7 folks with non-responses or problems, and over a dozen still pending.  This Reintegration Resources project gives tools to others who are looking to clear the air and move forward in cases that might otherwise feel like scorched earth.

Please contact Dan at [email protected] if you’d like to share stories or resources related to social exclusion, or to collaborate on any of the above projects (or any other ideas related to social exclusion)

Kristen M. Blankley (Nebraska Law)

  • Added as a new co-author on the 4thEdition of Dispute Resolution: Beyond the Adversarial Model with Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Lela Love, Andrea Schneider, and Michael Moffitt
  • Dispute Resolution Tradeoffs in Ombuds Office Design – this article describes variations in the form of organizational ombuds offices and discusses practical and ethical considerations based on how the office is structured. This paper will be submitted to law reviews in the Spring cycle.
  • Barriers and Facilitators Implementing Restorative Justice in Nebraska (with Ashley Votruba and Lisa PytlikZillig) was published in Conflict Resolution Quarterly in Fall 2024. This article discusses the results of a qualitative study examining why Nebraska stakeholders do or do not decide to implement restorative justice programs in their communities. This research group is working on additional papers on restorative justice research.

Bob Bordone 

Bob, along with his colleague, NYU Langone neurologist Dr. Joel Salinas, MD, will be releasing their new book Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In (HarperCollins, 2025) on March 18. Available for pre-order now, the book addresses the seeming inability of so many in our society to sit with the discomfort of disagreement. In a world where it is so easy to find cocoons of comfort and like-thinking, this book offers the idea of conflict resilience as a necessary leadership skill. The book is a primer on how each of us can lean into the discomfort of conflict and is informed by the latest brain science research. To learn more and pre-order: www.conflictresiliencebook.com.

Amy Cohen (Temple Law)

Pedagogies in the Meantime: Reflections on ADR and Restorative Justice in U.S. and Canadian Legal Education, Journal of Legal Education (with Daniel Del Gobbo) (forthcoming 2024). 

In brief, the article draws on interviews with restorative justice educators in U.S. and Canadian law schools, and it illustrates how these educators are reviving diverse perspectives on law and justice, using two approaches we label “comparison” and “prefiguration” that stand to change what it means for a field to “mainstream.”

I have also worked with anthropologists Ilana Gershon (Rice University) and Joshua Babcock (Brown University) to study right-leaning movements’ turn to bottom-up and alternative legality. Two forthcoming papers examine what is commonly known by scholars as the Pseudolaw movement or self-named (by some involved) as the sovereign citizen movement, filled with loosely affiliated groups that share a common ideological approach to law. Among other core organizing commitments, sovereign citizens reimagine all forms of state adjudication as akin to voluntary mediation—that is, as a contract to engage in dispute resolution that they have the authority to refuse. See Prefigurative Neoliberalism: A Provisional Analysis of the Global Sovereign Citizen Movement, Polar: Political and Legal Anthropology Review (with Ilana Gershon) (forthcoming 2025) and Semiotic Determinacy: Sovereign Citizens’ Approach to Legal Language, Signs & Society (with Joshua Babcock & Ilana Gershon) (forthcoming 2025).

Lisa K. Dicker (Harvard Law) and Neil McGaraghan (Harvard Law)

The Seven Elements of Dispute Systems Design, 75 Washington University Journal of Law and Policy, 116-151 (2024)

https://journals.library.wustl.edu/lawpolicy/article/id/8933/.

Abstract: In this article, clinical instructors at the Harvard Law School Dispute Systems Design (“DSD”) Clinic propose adapting an old analytical framework — The Seven Elements of Interest-Based Negotiation — for a new context, dispute systems design (“DSD”). A relatively young field, DSD is the “applied art and science of designing the means to prevent, manage, and resolve streams of disputes or conflict.” DSD can feel broad and opaque to newcomers and thus is in need of a foundational framework, especially for beginners. The Seven Elements of DSD — alternatives, interests, options, criteria, communication, relationship, and commitment — can serve a helpful guiding framework for practitioners, scholars, and students alike in assessing, evaluating, and making design recommendations for dispute systems. The authors explain each of the Seven Elements and their application as tools of DSD and offer context for each element based on lessons learned from DSD practice.

Donna Erez-Navot (Florida Law)

Donna co-edited the textbook Mediation in an Evolving World: Theory and Practice, 1st Edition with Professors James Alfini, Bill Froehlich, Sharon Press, Joseph Stulberg and Oladeji Tiamiyu.  This textbook included an in-depth teacher’s manual which allows professors to teach the formative articles and provide their students with experiential opportunities.

Donna is the Reporter for the Task Force updating the ABA Family Law Section & AFCC Model Standards for Divorce and Family Mediators. The Task Force has been meeting since 2022 and plans to finish its work in 2025.

Doug Frenkel (Penn Carey Law) and Jim Stark (U Conn Law)

Doug and Jim are happy to report that the fourth edition of The Practice of Mediation: A Video-Integrated Text, their widely used textbook, is in press and will be released by Aspen Publishing in early 2025, in time for Fall adoptions.

This new edition is the most ambitious since the book’s first edition, containing two new chapters and approximately 40 minutes of newly produced video content.

Mirroring recent developments in the world of mediation practice (including clinical fieldwork), the first new chapter focuses on remote mediation, canvassing what 50 years of empirical research teaches us about how communicating on a screen affects the impressions people form of each other and the way they behave. It discusses the effects of video conferencing on such key interpersonal dynamics as liking, credibility, creativity, cooperation and trust. Extrapolating from this research, it makes suggestions about variables parties and neutrals should consider when choosing a format for a particular matter. Assuming that the parties choose to mediate remotely, the text then explores technology-based options for conducting a virtual mediation to maximum advantage.

The second new chapter focuses on pre-mediation conferencing, a planning topic that has assumed greater importance due to the rise in the use of remote proceedings. Adding to the book’s three original video case studies, we illustrate such conferences with excerpts from three separate Zoom planning meetings, conducted by three different mediators, set in a new employment discrimination matter involving a claim of sexual harassment. As with the book’s original video case studies, the sessions are unscripted, the parties are played by professional actors, and the mediators and lawyers are all highly experienced in the relevant subject matter, instructed only to act as they would in an actual case. Comparing how these neutrals behaved with newly available empirical research on pre-mediation conferencing, the text explores how mediators can make optimal use of pre-session communications to establish a firm foundation for a successful process.

Jill I. Gross (Haub Law at Pace University)

Jill is working on a paper that argues that the FAA should be amended to include a definition of “arbitration.” Here is the draft abstract:

Because the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) does not define the term “arbitration,” courts have grappled with its meaning. Some courts have applied the FAA to agreements to resolve disputes in processes other than binding arbitration, such as appraisal and mediation. The Supreme Court has justified enforcing class arbitration waivers on the grounds that class arbitration is not “arbitration” within the meaning of the FAA. And companies have drafted adhesive arbitration clauses to require a process lacking certain hallmarks of due process. Parties entering into agreements cannot predict whether a particular process will be covered by the FAA’s protections and enforcement mechanisms. This paper argues that Congress should add a precise definition of the process of “arbitration” to the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). Congress should define arbitration as a consensual dispute resolution process that results in a binding and final determination after all parties have had notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard by a neutral decision-maker. Adding this definition would: (1) prevent courts from treating non-arbitration processes like arbitration, (2) prevent courts from excluding processes that meet the definition of arbitration from the benefits of the FAA; (3) provide uniformity and predictability, and (4) address forced arbitration due process concerns.

In addition, Jill and Rick Bales (Ohio Northern College of Law) are co-hosting a Virtual Book Launch to celebrate the recent publication of their co-edited volume The Federal Arbitration Act: Successes, Failures, and a Roadmap for Reform (Cambridge University Publishing 2024). Produced in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Federal Arbitration Act, this volume brings together a diverse group of leading scholars and practitioners to celebrate its successes and propose specific reforms. The book gives insight into how the Federal Arbitration Act impacts the modern practice of arbitration and how the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Act undermines its fairness. Focusing on domestic, commercial and consumer, as well as securities and labor and employment arbitration, it provides a roadmap for legislators to reform the Act to enhance its fairness and coherence. Please join the book’s co-editors and contributors for this free on-line event providing collective recommendations for law reform. To attend, please register here: pace.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_AHOA7SPCSgKc7ecr26vlAw#/….

Art Hinshaw (ASU Law), Andrea Schneider (Cardozo Law), and Sarah Cole (The Ohio State–Moritz Law)

Art, Andrea, and Sarah are finalizing their second book in the Discussions in Dispute Resolution series, Discussions in Dispute Resolution (Volume II): The Coming of Age (2000-2009) (forthcoming Oxford University Press, 2025).  In its predecessor, Discussions in Dispute Resolution: The Foundational Articles (2021), we celebrated the field’s foundational writings and reflected on what makes those pieces so important.  This book focuses on the 16 most significant and influential academic articles on U.S. dispute resolution in during its golden age of extraordinary academic growth – the years 2000 to 2010 – the period in which dispute resolution became a fixture in legal academic study and pedagogy as well as legal practice.  Each article is summarized and then commented upon by 4 leading academics, including where possible, the author(s) of the article being commented upon.

John Lande (University of Missouri Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution)

I posted a series of articles on SSRN about mediation representation and legal education.

Perhaps the most useful one for you is the shortest – 2 pages:  How Attorneys Can Be Quasi-Mediators.  It provides a good list of techniques for mediators and attorneys in mediation you might give your students.

Check out the Model Mediation Course Syllabus with Teaching Notes even if you are teaching a DR course other than mediation.  It includes a menu of topics, readings, and simulations that can be incorporated in many courses.  It includes links to short readings available for free on the internet.

Mediation Representation articles:

Legal education articles:

Don’t forget Oxymorons R Us.

Most of my Indisputably posts during this period summarized these articles.  However, New Mediation Syllabi on DRLE Website announced the addition of new syllabi on the DRLE website, including a separate page for mediation representation syllabi.

I write a regular Theory Meets Practice column for CPR’s Alternatives magazine.

Here are collections of materials:

David Larson (Mitchell Hamline Law)

The Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution has accepted the article for publication titled “Chinese Shared Courts and the New York Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) Pilot Project: Lessons Learned” that I co-authored with Zhou Yiyan, Associate Professor of Law and Vice Dean Wenzhou University Law School, October, 2024.

Katrina Lee (The Ohio State—Moritz Law)

In addition to what’s listed below, I’m excited about teaching in Spring 2025 the second iteration of a new dispute resolution seminar course and colloquium series that my amazing colleague Ellen Deason designed and led in Spring 2024 (with me as co-teacher). The seminar course is titled Dispute Resolution, Equity, and Social Justice and is supported by a Moritz College of Law Firestarter grant, allowing our Program on Dispute Resolution to host two fantastic ADR Professors, Oladeji Tiamiyu and Rachel Wechsler, who will each speak in the seminar and deliver a public lecture in March 2025. I’ll be teaching the seminar solo this year with Ellen still generously providing guidance and counsel behind the scenes. Hopefully, this seminar and colloquium series will result in more ADR scholarship and discussion focused at the intersection indicated by the course title.

  • Research, with Columbus Division of Police as community partner
  • Improving Internal Police Negotiation and Communication Tools to Improve Police-Civilian Interaction (supported by $250,000 grant from AAA-ICDR). Plan for 2025: conduct interviews and focus groups with members of Columbus Division of Police, design and implement train-the-trainer training, develop report with training guidance. [Principal Investigator: Katrina Lee; Co-Investigator: Simone Drake]
  • Katrina Lee, The Legal Career: Knowing the Business, Thriving in Practice, 3d ed. (forthcoming 2025) [includes interview with Alyson Carrel!]
  • Katrina Lee, Negotiation Reflection in Law Practice, ___ St. Louis U. L.J. ___ (2025) (special issue: Teaching ADR, Mediation, Negotiation, and Client Counseling)
  • Katrina Lee, Enduring Impact: Portrait of the Effective Lawyer Negotiator, Commentary on Andrea Schneider’s Shattering Negotiation Myths: Empirical Evidence on the Effectiveness of Negotiation Style (2002), appearing in Discussions in Dispute Resolution (Volume II): The Coming of Age (2000-2009) (A. Hinshaw, A. Schneider, and S. Cole eds.) (forthcoming Oxford University Press, 2025).

Thomas M. Madden (Marist College)

Advancing Commercial Mediation, 40 Ohio St. J. on Disp. Resol. 36 (2024).

Link:

https://moritzlaw.osu.edu/osjdr-publications

Abstract:

This article provides an initial look at the State of New York’s recent roll-out of presumptive ADR since the fall of 2019, sharing new data on the extent and success of the roll-out. Moreover, this article presents a detailed discussion of Italy’s experience with court-connected mediation since its response to the European Union (EU) directive of 2008. New York and Italy offer two of the world’s most populous and prominent bars and some of the world’s most litigious commerce. This look at both New York (obviously a major state in terms of population and economic clout) and Italy (a leading nation in the EU in fostering broad-based mediation, if not the leading nation) shows that the role of lawyers, as counsel to clients in civil commercial litigation and mediation (not simply the role of lawyers as mediators) is largely determinative of the success of court-connected mediation. In addition, these two examples lead us to believe that the role of lawyers’ business clients as participants in mediation demands greater attention, education, and reform if commercial mediation is to fully succeed in bettering dispute resolution. The author offers recommendations intended to do just that.

Thomas M. Madden, Adjunct Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law (Boston, MA); tenured Associate Professor of Business Law, Marist College School of Management (Poughkeepsie, NY).

Rob McNiff (Georgia Law)

My essay, “Being There: Perils of Disembodied Mediation”, has been accepted for publication in the forthcoming issue of the Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal. In the essay, I examine closely the feature of face-to-face mediation that online meetings can never replicate—embodied encounter between the participants. We are embodied beings, and our bodies are indispensable to our experience and perceptions. I argue that the physical presence of others animates certain human capacities that are lost or diminished online. I probe the intuitions of some who find online mediation “dehumanizing” or hostile to the development of empathy or “devoid of emotional interplay”. Applying findings from philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology and ADR research, I explore features of face-to-face encounter from handshakes to eye contact to emotional experience that explain why human faculties for empathy, association, attention, emotion and even moral agency atrophy in a “virtual” forum. These findings may apply in many contexts—court proceedings, negotiation, client counseling—and could inform judgments about how to utilize teleconferencing in various settings common to lawyering and mediation.

Carrie Menkel-Meadow (UC Irvine Law)

Books:

(1)  International Conflict Resolution Processes (Carolina Press, 2025), with Andrea Kupfer Schneider.

(2) Dispute Resolution: Beyond the Adversarial Model (4th ed.- Aspen—with Lela Love, Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Michael Moffitt and Kristen Blankley)

(3) Currently writing,  Elgar Advanced Introduction to Dispute Resolution (book forthcoming)

Book chapters:

“Multistakeholder Mediation”, in Springer Handbook on Public Participation in Environmental Governance (edited by Ortwin Renn, Pia-Johanna Schweitzer, Thomas Webler and Peter Weideman (with commentary on use of the term “stakeholder” in complex multiparty decision making)

“Dispute Resolution as Civil Justice: The Evolution of Process Pluralism” in Elgar Handbook on Civil Justice (Anne Bloom, David Engel and Richard Jolly, eds)

Henry Kissinger as Master Negotiator—in Great Negotiators (edited book)

“A Systematic Approach to Dispute System Design” in Discussions in Dispute Resolution II (edited by Sarah Cole, Art Hinshaw and Andrea Schneider, Oxford University Press

“Negotiation, Mediation and ADR” for Elgar Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Law

“Women’s Lawyering Processes” in Elgar Encyclopedia of Gender, Sexuality and the Law

“Conflict Resolution” in Elgar Encyclopedia of Law and Peace (L. Mallender, ed).

Peter Reilly (Texas A&M Law)

Book review, Transformative Negotiation: Strategies for Everyday Change and Equitable Futures by Sarah Federman, Univ. California Press, 2023. Published in Negotiation Journal 40:3-4 (2024).

Federman’s book is excellent! You can read the brief review by clicking below:

Transformative Negotiation: Strategies for Everyday Change and Equitable Futures | Negotiation Journal | MIT Press

Shaphan Roberts (Pepperdine Caruso Law)

Below is a brief summary of the Hierarchical Resonance Theory (HRT), a framework I’m developing to examine the links between civil unrest, community trust, and law enforcement. The piece highlights its theoretical foundations and practical applications, particularly for policymakers and civic leaders.

Hierarchical Resonance Theory: Understanding Trust, Trauma, and Resilience in Civil Unrest

The Hierarchical Resonance Theory (HRT) offers a comprehensive framework for understanding the complex relationship between civil unrest, community trust, and perceptions of law enforcement. At its core, HRT is the idea of nested, concentric loops of social validation, where unresolved grievances from lower social “rings” of marginalized groups generate collective pressure. This unaddressed tension often manifests as social upheaval when systemic injustices—like racial profiling, economic inequality, or police violence—remain unacknowledged. Events like Rodney King and the death of George Floyd exemplify how these cycles erupt, highlighting deep fractures in societal trust.

Grounded in six key theoretical foundations—Social Identity Theory, Social Cognition Theory, Trauma Theory, Procedural Justice Theory, Hope Theory, and Collective Efficacy Theory—HRT explores how historical, psychological, and social processes shape public attitudes toward policing and broader institutional trust. Social Identity and Cognition Theories explain how collective identities and shared perceptions of bias shape community attitudes toward institutions like law enforcement. Trauma Theory explores the lingering psychological effects of generational oppression, which compound distrust of public institutions. Procedural Justice Theory emphasizes that perceptions of fairness and transparency are critical to maintaining legitimacy, while Hope Theory highlights the role of optimism, agency, and goal-setting in fostering resilience. Finally, Collective Efficacy Theory underscores how social cohesion within communities can drive recovery and collaboration in the aftermath of unrest.

HRT utilizes qualitative methodologies, including archival analysis and sentiment mapping, to investigate how social validation—or its absence—shapes these processes. Through this lens, HRT seeks to bridge the gaps between communities and institutions by addressing the cascading effects of unresolved trauma, systemic injustice, and inequitable power dynamics, Hierarchical Resonance Theory: Understanding Trust, Trauma, and Resilience in Civil Unrest offering a nuanced understanding of how communities experience and respond to systemic inequities. Its ultimate aim is to inform strategies that enhance procedural justice, strengthen hope, and cultivate collective resilience.

By addressing the root causes of mistrust, fostering procedural fairness, and cultivating hope and collective efficacy, HRT offers actionable insights for policymakers, law enforcement, and civic leaders, seeking to transform cycles of invalidation and unrest into systems of trust, equity and resilience, providing a model for more inclusive and sustainable societal structures.

Amy J. Schmitz (The Ohio State—Moritz Law) is working hard on research with three key grants to develop and expand her  JusticeTech program. The Good-to-Great grant of $1.25 million (2023-28) sparked the initial development of a practicum course designing and building Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) to address eviction and truancy. This work is expanding with the help of a AAA-ICDR Grant for $250,000 (2024-29) and an Ohio State Bar Foundation grant of over $63,000 (2024-25) to fund expenses of research and development related to user-centric and human centric design based on empirical data.

Meanwhile, she completed a Fulbright Specialist Project in Spain related to AI and Access to Justice, which involved several presentations and collaborations that are ongoing with University of Granada.

She also completed several book chapters, including:

  • AI and Alternative Dispute Resolution, Edward Elgar Encyclopedia of AI and the Law (EE Press, forthcoming 2025);
  • Evolution and Emerging Issues in Consumer ODR, The Cambridge Handbook on Emerging Issues at the Intersection of Commercial Law and Technology, with Nancy Kim, ed. (Cambridge, forthcoming 2025);
  • HACIA UN FUTURO DE LA JUSTICIA CENTRADO EN LAS HUMANIDADES: INTEGRANDO ODR, IA E INDUSTRIA 5.0 EN LOS SISTEMAS JURÍDICOS, in Tendencias de la Innovación Legal, (Universidad Externado de Colombia 2024);
  • Resolving NFT Disputes, The Cambridge Handbook on the Law and Policy of NFTs (Cambridge 2024);
  • Designing to Expand Access to Justice in United States Court Online Dispute Resolution (ODR), Digital Courts: Integrating Human and Artificial Intelligence (Oxford University Press 2025);
  • Picking the Proper Problem-Solving Tool in Arbitration, ArbMetaBlock (Full title tba), (Maud Piers & Sean McCarthy editors, forthcoming 2025);
  • Updating FAA Section 7 for the Digital Age, THE FEDERAL ARBITRATION ACT: SUCCESSES, FAILURES, AND A ROADMAP FOR REFORM (Richard A. Bales & Jill I. Gross, editors, 2024 Cambridge University Press).

She is working on two book projects and a few articles that will hopefully be in the next edition and hopes to see many of you at AALS, where she will present on JusticeTech!

Andrea Schneider (Cardozo Law)

Andrea just published the findings of her empirical study on women in law firms, noting significant gaps in pay and at the leadership level.  On the other hand, law firms vary widely and law students—with key questions—can both discover these important differences and push for change.  The article is The New Glass Ceiling (with Abigail Bogli and Hannah Chin) 2024 Wisconsin Law Review 1647 (2024).  She is also finishing up, with Carrie Menkel-Meadow, a brand new textbook on international conflict resolution to be published January 2025 by Carolina Academic Press.  New editions of the textbooks Dispute Resolution: Beyond the Adversarial Model (4th edition) with Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Lela Love, Michael Moffitt and Kristen Blankley and Examples & Explanations: Dispute Resolution (5th edition) with Michael Moffitt and Sarah Cole will also be out this spring.  [And note the entry under Art Hinshaw for our next round of the Discussions in Dispute Resolution book]  Finally, Towards the FAA’s Next Century: Clarifying Disclosure Requirements in Arbitration (with Brian Farkas) American University Business Law Review will be forthcoming this summer.

Jennifer L. Schulz (University of Manitoba)

Jennifer has published “Mediator Liability 23 Years Later: The ‘Three Cs’ of Case Law, Codes & Custom” (2024) 55:1 Ottawa Law Review 151-186

https://ssrn.com/abstract=4811542

The article examines the case law from Canada, the United States, England, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa and reveals that courts are still not holding mediators liable, even where their conduct is negligent. Dr. Schulz gave an invited talk, “Senses and Feelings: TV Mediators Can Show Us How it’s Done” in May 2024 at the annual Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities conference. Her career was spotlighted in one of Cambridge’s alumni magazines

https://johnian.joh.cam.ac.uk/articles/career-spotlight-jennifer-l-schulz-1994/

Jennifer has both a mediation chapter and a mediation article in progress. The article is of particular interest because it will be the first to investigate, based on qualitative interviews, the use of mediation in Indigenous business disputes. Finally, she would like to make a shameless plug for her book, now four years old, which she forgot to include in this list in 2020. Mediation & Popular Culture (2020 Routledge UK) was described by Bernie Mayer, John Lande and Debbie Kolb as “essential reading” and “highly recommend.”  Amy Cohen and Jenn Reynolds reviewed it for Harvard’s (2021) Negotiation Journal 37(3) at 417-420 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nejo.12368

Sarah Cole reviewed it for Indisputably:

http://indisputably.org/2020/06/book-review-a-must-read-and-a-fun-read-mediation-and-popular-culture-by-professor-jennifer-l-schulz/ Here’s a link to the book: https://www.routledge.com/Mediation–Popular-Culture/Schulz/p/book/9781032238135

Ellen Waldman (CPR) and Robyn Weinstein (Cardozo Law)

Anti Anti-Bias: The Impact of Anti-DEI Legislation on Mediator Training

Mediator impartiality is central to the credibility of the process. Ethical guidance around the globe commands neutrals to act “without bias, favoritism or preference.” And, yet, as a generation of behavioral scientists have schooled us, human data-gathering and decision-making is rife with cognitive distortions of dizzying variety- including affinity biases that lead us to favor those we perceive as falling within our “tribe,” and disfavor those we perceive as falling without. Scholarly critics such as Richard Delgado, Trina Grillo and Carol Izumi warned that mediation’s private, informal quality would allow unconscious racial bias to flourish and suggested that guardrails be put in place to assure that disputants from traditionally marginalized groups did not suffer.

On the theory that unconscious bias could be curtailed through training and education, law schools, courts, institutional providers and trade groups developed implicit bias workshops to arm mediators with the tools to reflect on and mitigate biases that might otherwise taint their interventions.  These workshops are now in peril. More than 30 anti-DEI bills have been proposed across the U.S. seeking to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion funding and practices within educational institutions and state agencies.  Anti DEI bills have been signed into law in Florida, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Alabama, Idaho, and Iowa.  This project will review current anti-DEI legislation and discuss their potential impact on anti-bias training for mediators. We will be presenting on this topic at the ABA Dispute Resolution Section Conference and will subsequently write up our findings.

Steve Ware (Kansas Law) (Kansas)

Recently wrote:

  1. The Supreme Court’s Defensible Interpretations of the Federal Arbitration Act and Section 2’s “Arising out of” Requirement: An Argument for Repeal in The Federal Arbitration Act: Successes, Failures, and a Roadmap for Reform (Bales & Gross, eds. forthcoming Cambridge).
  2. Contracting Away Constitutional Rights in the United States: Adhesive Consent (Blanket Assent) to Arbitration and other Agreements, 26 German Law Journal (forthcoming 2025).
  3. Drahozal’s Defense of Southland in Discussions in Dispute Resolution: The Foundational Articles, Vol. II (Hinshaw, Schneider, and Cole, eds.) (Oxford forthcoming).

Steve is currently writing two books and four articles:

  1. Principles of Negotiation and Mediation (West Concise Hornbook Series 2025)
  2. Arbitration (Foundation Press University Casebook Series, 5th 2025) (with David Horton, Tamar Meshel & Alan Rau).
  3. Arbitrating Bankruptcies, (unpublished draft, comments welcome)
  4. Reconciling Bankruptcy Statutes and the Federal Arbitration Act (I’d love to send you a draft for comments!).
  5. Repeal the Federal Arbitration Act’s “Arising out of” Requirement, 14 American University Business Law Review (2025).
  6. Enforcement of Mediated Settlements: A Comparative Perspective (to be presented at the University of Warsaw 2025 March).

Maureen Weston (Pepperdine Caruso Law)

See Weston Academic Papers SSRN

 Articles:

New Editions to Casebooks:

  • Sports Law: Cases & Materials & Instructor’s Manual (Carolina Academic Press) (10thed 2024) (9th 2020); (8th ed. 2016) (7th ed. 2011) (6th ed. 2006) (co-authors Raymond Yasser, James McCurdy, Peter Goplerud), with accompanying Teacher Manual and slides.
  • Arbitration Law, Policy, & Practice (with co-authors Kristen Blankley & Jill Gross). Carolina Academic Press (2nd 2024) (1sted. 2018) (including Teaching Manual, worksheets, slides & annual updates)
  • Understanding Alternative Dispute Resolution (with co-author Kristen Blankley). Carolina Academic Press (2nd 2024) (1sted. 2019)

Weston also served as an arbitrator for U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee TEAM USA selection disputes for Paris 2024 Summer Games, and has recently been appointed to the NCAA Committee on Infractions.

Helen Winter (Pepperdine Caruso Law)

The following article will be published in the St. Louis University Law Journal ADR Teaching Edition in April 2025.

Educating for Impact: A Pioneering Course in ADR and Social Entrepreneurship

This article examines the integration of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) principles with social entrepreneurship as a means to address pressing societal challenges. The article reflects Dr. Winter’s innovative approach to legal education, drawing from her experience designing and teaching the inaugural ADR and Social Entrepreneurship course at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law.

Dr. Winter highlights how ADR mechanisms – such as mediation, negotiation, and system design – can be combined with entrepreneurial strategies to develop sustainable solutions for real-world conflicts. Inspired by her work with R3SOLUTE, a nonprofit that trains refugees and locals as peer mediators, the article explores how these principles can empower individuals and communities to resolve disputes effectively while fostering social innovation.

The article emphasizes experiential learning, showcasing how law students, through practical applications and stakeholder engagement, can be equipped to create ventures that blend conflict resolution with social impact. By focusing on leadership, collaboration, and creative problem-solving, Dr. Winter demonstrates how this integrated approach prepares students to address global challenges both as future legal professionals, mediators and as social entrepreneurs.

Ultimately, this work illustrates how blending theoretical knowledge with real-world application can drive systemic change and personal empowerment. The article will be published in the St. Louis University Law Journal ADR Teaching Edition in April 2025.