Reclaiming Mediation's Future: Re-Focusing on Party Self-Determination

Authors

Robert A. Baruch Bush, Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University
Joseph P. Folger, Temple University

Abstract

The premise of the Symposium that occasioned this Issue was that mediation is presently underutilized almost everywhere, and that the reason for this phenomenon is that the public simply doesn't grasp the great value of the process due to inadequate outreach and education efforts about mediation as an alternative to the legal system. Some suggest that greater use of mandatory mediation policies is called for as a response, rather than continuing the fruitless effort to explain mediation's value to an apparently unreceptive public. We disagree about both the cause and the solution for lack of public interest in mediation. We believe that mediation's lack of success in the dispute resolution "market" is not due to the public's lack of knowledge about the process, but rather to the public's dissatisfaction with the mediation process as they have actually encountered it, in the courts and elsewhere. That is, the problem lies not with an uninterested community of potential users, but with the failure of mediation providers to deliver a "product" that lives up to its promises and offers something truly new and valuable to its users.

Disciplines

Dispute Resolution and Arbitration | Law | Legal Profession | Medical Jurisprudence

Recommended Citation

Robert A. Bush & Joseph P. Folger, Reclaiming Mediation's Future: Re-Focusing on Party Self-Determination, 16 Cardozo J. Conflict Resol. 741 (2015).
Available at: https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/cjcr/vol16/iss3/4