Andrew Olejnik of Jenner & Block and Olivier André of the CPR Institute have co-authored an article that appears in Bankruptcy Law Reporter on the growing use of ADR tools in bankruptcy. Dating the trend from a 2009 conference convened by the American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review, the authors conclude...
Deborah Masucci, Chair of the International Mediation Institute, has sent around a forceful message asking the international mediation community to support initiatives to ensure that agreements reached during mediation have the status of enforceable contracts, in all jurisdictions around the world. The initiative resembles the effort 60 years ago to make...
THE EXERCISE: Imagine a market with fully successful commercial mediation. (Its success is measured by the breadth of take-up by commercial disputants and the infrequency of litigated cases involving business disputes.) What are its attributes? What conditions gave rise to this broadly-accepted use of mediation as a day-to-day method of...
The UIA World Mediation Forum in Houston has generated the usual mixture of stimulation and camaraderie. The first panel concerned "Mediation: The Judicial Perspective Here and Abroad." Aleš Zalar, former Minister of Justice of Slovenia and currently President of the European Centre for Dispute Resolution of Ljubljana, moderated the panel, and...
At a recent meeting of the Dispute Resolution Committee of the ABA Business Law Section, a new mandatory mediation initiative was presented that may be unique in scale in structure. Judge Michael Kaplan of the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey explained the program, along with consultants Suzanne...
Tom Stipanowich called the Delaware Court of Chancery's arbitration program "a veritable trifecta of procedural advantages for commercial parties, including expert adjudication, efficient case management and short cycle time and, above all, a proceeding cloaked in secrecy." But he warned that its constitutionality was in doubt. Now the Third Circuit...
There seems to be a presumption that being a mediator implicates public policy, and that the practice of mediation needs to be somehow regulated for the public good. In my region, for example, one must demonstrate training, skills or both in order to be listed on various court-annexed mediation panels. At...