Featured Stories

From the Chair

It has been my privilege and honor to serve as your chair in a productive year marked by many members and volunteers making a real difference.

A National Resource for Dispute Resolution System Intergration and Performance Enhancement

Along with its own nationally recognized staff, CADRE draws on the expertise of an outstanding group of consultants and advisors. The challenge of providing technical assistance to a large number of entities with limited staffing and resources has required CADRE to think creatively and to use technology to disseminate emerging, innovative, and effective practices.

Restorative Justice in Schools: Restoring Relationships and Building Community

Systems that feature zero tolerance and that emphasize punishment can engender fear, and fear can restrain misbehavior—in some students some of the time. However, studies of the incidence of repeat offenses under these systems suggest that “fear-deterrence” very often fails. Schools with high suspension rates also have high repeat offender rates.

School-based Conflict Resolution Education and Peer Mediation Programs: The Western Justice Center Experience

Conflict resolution and mediation training can provide opportunities for student leaders—including those who may lead others down questionable roads— to flourish and channel their skills in a positive direction. At Western Justice Center (WJC), we work to promote conflict resolution education and peer mediation in schools.

Words Work: Teaching Youth Words that Work

The discussion of how important it is to learn conflict resolution and effective communication skills at an early age was only one of the driving forces leading to the development of the Words Work program.

Promoting Equity for Miinorities in Hurricane Mediation Programs

Insurance plays an integral role in recovery after such disasters because victims need to settle claims quickly with their insurers to begin the rebuilding process. Without insurance proceeds, many homeowners are unable to repair the damage to their homes, preventing the homeowners from moving forward with their lives.

Stories Mediators Tell, by Eric Galton & Lela Love (2012)

What these stories show is how mediation can help people discover the good, the courageous, the creative, and the generous in themselves.

Raymond Shonholtz:Tribute to a Visionary Friend

Ray Shonholtz truly made a difference in moving collaborative decision-making into neighborhoods, school playgrounds, and countries where bottom-up decision-making was new. He changed lives and improved civic society locally, nationally, and internationally.

Ethical Guidance in Mediation

What are a mediator’s ethical obligations if he or she learns during the course of a mediation that one side, unknown to the other, has initiated a referral of the other side’s conduct for prosecution to law enforcement authorities, but asks the mediator not to share that information in private caucus?

ADR Cases

In Rain CII Carbon, LLC v. ConocoPhillips Co., No. 11-30669, 674 F.3d 469 (5th Cir. March 9, 2012), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that an arbitrator’s eight-page award satisfied an arbitration agreement requirement for a “reasoned” award, even if it did not include full “findings of fact and conclusions of law.”

Section News

Nominations for Section Leadership At the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago the Section membership elected new leadership for the 2012-13 bar year.