Find Mediators Near You:

Can We Negotiate Justice?

Thanks to Geoff Sharp over at mediator blah blah for citing us to Justice Trumps Peace: the Enduring Relevance of Owen Fiss’s Against Settlement by Don Ellinghausen, Jr.  Geoff Sharp’s excellent post on the issues raised (again) is here and Ellinghusen’s exhaustive treatment of mediation’s limitations and overblown claims here.

Agree with Fiss, Ellinghausen, Laura Nader and Carrie Menkel-Meadow or not, there shouldn’t be a mediator practicing who is unaware of these serious criticisms of the mediation process.  If we’re not aware of them, we can’t avoid the potential for “muscle” mediation to prevent even the aspirational goal of delivering justice without regard to gender, color, power, social status, wealth and all the rest of the social markers the law has been so careful to avoid paying obeisance to.

Check it out.

                        author

Victoria Pynchon

Attorney-mediator Victoria Pynchon is a panelist with ADR Services, Inc. Ms. Pynchon was awarded her LL.M Degree in Dispute Resolution from the Straus Institute in May of 2006, after 25 years of complex commercial litigation practice, with sub-specialties in intellectual property, securities fraud, antitrust, insurance coverage, consumer class actions and all… MORE >

Featured Mediators

ad
View all

Read these next

Category

What Does Fairness Have to do with It?

PGP Mediation Blog by Phyllis G. Pollack In my years as a mediator, it has struck me that the smaller the dispute, the harder it is to settle. And, I...

By Phyllis Pollack
Category

The Perfect Mediation (humor video)

This video is presented as part of Mediate.com's 25th Anniversary Conference.

By Chip Rose
Category

Your Student is Headed Back to In-person Learning – and There May be Things to Fear that Have Nothing to do with COVID-19

After an unprecedented year of catch-as-catch-can learning, most students will feel a tad behind the eightball, which is expected. That's book-smarts; how about emotional intelligence? Let's be honest, for some...

By Veera Mahajan
×