Each year, the Works-In-Progress Conference brings ADR researchers and professors together to share what they are working on and gain insights from the other participants. At this year’s conference, held at Ohio State University in November, topics relevant to court ADR were well represented. Below is a short synopsis of the most relevant items in the materials. Be aware that they are still works in progress and not in final form. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Research’ Category
Foreclosure Mediation Upheld against Constitutional Challenge
Just Court ADR, August 23rd, 2012For the second time in as many years, a foreclosure mediation program has faced a constitutional challenge. This time, the 153,000-person city of Springfield, Massachusetts, will be allowed to move forward with a foreclosure mediation program for residents.
The first was a constitutional challenge from Wells Fargo against the Nevada Supreme Court Foreclosure Mediation Program. Wells Fargo claims the mediation program itself violates the due process clause. More specifically, Wells Fargo claims a provision that allows sanctions for non-compliance, violated the U.S. constitution. Nevada’s mediation program allows judges to issue sanctions if the lender does not participate in good faith. Sanctions may include an ordered write-down of the mortgage. Wells Fargo says this violates the contracts clause and the takings clause by interfering with a contract provision and appropriating private real and personal property for public use without compensation. The court (more…)
The Silent Space: Mediation Confidentiality, the Right to Privacy, and the Mediator’s Role
Just Court ADR, July 12th, 2012In her recent article in The Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution (and in previous articles here and a workshop here), Susan Oberman discusses the tension between mediation’s promotion of confidentiality and the constitutional right to privacy. While the article examines extensively the history of privacy, confidentiality, and constitutional/state law, I want to point mediators and court mediation program administrators to an issue of particular relevance for their practice. (more…)
New Report Shows US Federal Courts Embrace ADR
Just Court ADR, June 26th, 2012The US Courts’ news service posted last week about a preliminary report by Donna Stienstra at the Federal Judicial Center that shows the extent to which federal courts use ADR. Thirty years after a handful of courts first began experimenting with ADR, every federal district court now authorizes some form of ADR, and a third of courts authorize multiple ADR processes. During the year ending June 30, 2011, more than 28,000 cases were referred to ADR in 49 district courts (out of 94 total district courts; statistics weren’t available for the remaining courts). (more…)
