Gini Nelson’s Engaging Conflicts

Prof. John Lande has his new article (of the above-title) in the Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution (”JDR“), the official law journal of the American Bar Association’s Section on Dispute Resolution and the most cited journal in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution, available as a .pdf online at his website. It’s a comprehensive and detailed article (almost 90 pages including it footnotes) recommending policymaking principles; outlining a general approach to policymaking; and then applying the principles to proposals for new ethical rules for negotiation, specifically Collaborative Law ethical rule proposals. He recommendations and conclusions include: (1) dispute system design should be the initial and primary approach in analyzing policy options; (2) process pluralism is critical to engender a wide range of available “goals, norms, procedures, results, professional roles, skills, and styles in handling disputes involving legal issues,” to promote an ADR system as a whole rather than to promote one particular ADR process; and (3) legal regulation should be a limited and last resort in developing new ADR policies.