Back in April, following Marc Galanter’s passing, John Lande wrote a lovely post honoring Galanter’s life and work.  John was the most appropriate of Indisputably’s contributors to write that tribute, given that he was one of Galanter’s grad students back in the day.I mention this because another tribute to Galanter crossed my desk today.  Although written on May 31st, this one comes from Jeffrey Rachlinski in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. While I’d like to share it in toto here (link here — it may be paywalled, so you may need to ask your library for access), it’s…
Continue Reading Long Live Marc Galanter

With thanks for Peter Reilly (Texas A&M) for compiling this twice a year, listed below are our colleagues’ current scholarship projects:Gilat Juli Bachar (Temple Law)Against Overbroad Nondisclosures, 100 S. Cal. L. Rev. _ (forthcoming 2026/7):

• This paper addresses the overlooked problem of overbroad settlement non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Although confidentiality is regarded as a cornerstone of dispute resolution, sweeping NDAs can undermine one of settlement’s central objectives—helping parties achieve meaningful closure—by preventing individuals from discussing emotionally-taxing disputes even with therapists, clergy, or immediate family members. Drawing on doctrinal analysis and research in psychology, the paper demonstrates how such clauses may

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Continue Reading ADR Scholarship Projects (August 2026)

As many of you know via the list serv, Carrie Menkel-Meadow’s latest ADR text is out, Advanced Introduction to Alternative Dispute Resolution, and available for purchase.  Here’s are the key features of this book as listed on the book’s webpage:

• Reviews the latest issues in multi-party, multi-issue international disputes
• Outlines adjudication, arbitration, mediation, negotiation and various hybridized processes
• Analyses critiques of alternative forms of dispute resolution as well as jurisprudential theories
• Explores innovations in online dispute resolution, including the challenges and opportunities which arise from the use of artificial intelligence
• Illustrates how innovative processes of facilitation and consensus building can

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Continue Reading Advanced Introduction to Alternative Dispute Resolution by Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Earlier this week, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted, in part, a broker-dealer’s request for review of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s denial of the firm’s petition for rulemaking related to FINRA arbitration. See Thrivent Financial for Lutherans v. Securities and Exchange Commission, __F. 4th __, 2026 WL 2095279 (D.C. Cir. July 21, 2026).  Though the opinion breaks little new ground with respect to administrative law, the court’s dicta with respect to the intersection of the Federal Arbitration Act, FINRA arbitration, and the federal securities laws caught my attention.In the case, the bylaws of Thrivent, a registered…
Continue Reading D.C. Circuit and Securities Arbitration

A bit of exciting news from Santa Clara Law: our conflict resolution program is becoming the Daley Center for Conflict Resolution, thanks to a $5 million gift from alumna Dorian Daley that will endow the Center. For those of us who have been building the program since its founding in 2017, this is an especially meaningful milestone because the endowment gives us the resources to invest in students, scholarship, conferences, and new initiatives for years to come. We’re excited about what this will make possible and deeply grateful for Dorian’s support. If you’re interested, here’s the university’s announcement.
Continue Reading Exciting News from Santa Clara Law Dispute Resolution Program

The Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution at the University of California College of Law, San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings) has launched a new Survey on Commercial Mediation in the U.S.  The Survey has the support of AAA/ICDR, CPR Institute and DRS, and JAMS.  A link to the survey instrument can be found below.
Commercial mediation now resolves billions of dollars in business disputes every year, yet remarkably little is known about how sophisticated users actually experience the process. This is one of the first large-scale efforts to examine commercial mediation across the United States through the perspective of parties,…
Continue Reading Please Fill Out UC Law SF’s Survey on Commercial Mediation

I’m delighted to post the new call for applications for this terrific program!  Apply now!!
AALS SECTION ON ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTIONCALL FOR APPLICATIONS2026-2027 NEW VOICES IN DISPUTE RESOLUTION PROGRAM
The AALS Section on Alternative Dispute Resolution announces the call for applications for the 2026-2027 mentorship program entitled “New Voices in Dispute Resolution.”
New Voices in Dispute Resolution is a year-long mentorship program in which junior scholars will be paired with senior mentors in the field for the purposes of obtaining feedback on their current scholarship. During the fall semester, the mentor will be available to discuss one academic project related…
Continue Reading New Voices in Dispute Resolution–Call for Applications!!

Many dispute resolution practitioners would answer that question with a simple “no.”
Until recently, I would have answered the question the same way.
When I thought about online dispute resolution (ODR), I thought about specialized online platforms like eBay.  ODR seemed like a distinct corner of the dispute resolution field that was completely disconnected from my own work.
In researching a profile of Colin Rule, I read his 2016 article, Is ODR ADR?: A Response to Carrie Menkel-Meadow.  He wrote that ODR is “the use of information and communications technologies to help parties resolve their disputes.”  He said…
Continue Reading Do You Know That You Use ODR?

Just over 40 years ago, Owen Fiss wrote his famous article Against Settlement, arguing that settlement was bad public policy.  While the article has long served as a foil for dispute resolution academics, it is a good read — especially if you disagree with it, as do some of the commenters in the first volume of Discussions in Dispute Resolution: The Foundational Articles.  The article also spawned a number of law review articles adopting the “against something” format, my favorite of which is likely Michael Moffitt’s Three Things to Be Against (“Settlement” Not Included).
Fiss’s article came…
Continue Reading Fiss Was Right – At Least About This One