Procedural Justice and International Dispute Resolution

As alternative dispute resolution continues to supplant trials within the United States, there has been a marked movement internationally towards greater reliance on formal adjudication to resolve disputes, especially in the areas of human rights violations and trade disputes.   Although the domestic and international trends seem in opposition to one another, Andrea Kupfer Schneider argues in a new article that the two trends are actually both responsive to demands for procedural justice.  Domestically, the flexibility of ADR gives litigants a greater sense of control over the process.  Internationally, formal adjudication gives small nations and otherwise-marginalized communities and individuals better opportunitities to make their voices heard. 

Andrea suggests that formal adjudication may be necessary to provide a sense of procedural justice in places where the rule of law is not well established.  However, within the United States and other nations where the rule of law is better established, ADR becomes a viable alternative. 

Although there seems to be an inevitable shift to consensual dispute resolution after formal adjudication mechanisms are set up, Andrea worries that this shift may sometimes happen too quickly, particularly with respect to human rights disputes — “consensual dispute resolution [may become] just another set of processes to be abused by those with power.”

This is just one dimension of the article, which contains many interesting reflections on the present and future of international dispute resolution.  Entitled “Bargaining in the Shadow of (International) Law: What the Normalization of Adjudication in International Governance Regimes Means for Dispute Resolution,” the article is available here on SSRN.  It was published at 41 N.Y.U. J. Int’l L. & Pol. 789.  The abstract appears after the jump. 

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Five Students Weigh in on the Daunting Challenge That Is 1L

If my Academic Support Program (ASP) orientation meeting was any indicator, new law students have a lot of questions, especially for rising second and third year law students, about what the first year will be like and what they can do to make it successful.

This summer, I have had the opportunity to work alongside five very bright, hardworking student interns and was able to ask them about their first year experience.  What is great about this group is that they come from a varied set of backgrounds, ages, sociopolitical views, and attend a variety of law schools—one at Franklin Pierce, one at University of Michigan, one at Harvard, and two at Chicago-Kent.  I asked that they share their answers to a number of questions that I recalled were asked in my ASP orientation session.  Those questions and a selection of their answers are below:

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Memories of Sensenbrenner Hall (Part 4)

In 1973 and at the age of 24, I walked into Sensenbrenner Hall for the first time, hoping I could transfer from Chicago Kent to Marquette. My husband had been offered a teaching position at Menomonee Falls East High School and I was happy to return to my home state. I met with Dean Bob Boden who could not have been more gracious in telling me that Marquette would be happy to let me enroll as a 2L.  So in the fall of 1973 I began classes with the 2Ls (except that I had to take Professor Aiken’s first year civil procedure year long course…an experience in and of itself).  In part, it was like starting law school all over again.

There was no orientation or introduction to anything at the law school. My first memory of meeting a student occurred when, on that first day, I was standing next to Barbara Berman. As many of you may recall, we lived, sat and interacted in alphabetical order. My last name at the time was also Berman. After Barbara found that out she said, “I hope you are smarter than me so if we get mixed up, I can benefit from it.”  That was the beginning of our life long friendship.

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