I attended a conference at NYU two weeks ago as part of NYU’s Journal of International Law & Politics symposium on the “Normalization of Adjudication in Complex International Governance Regimes.” Invited to bring a little dispute resolution to this otherwise complete adjudicatory focus, it was very interesting to think about what the “normalization” of international courts and decisions might mean for dispute resolution. I came to this conference with some background in writing on international trade dispute resolution regarding the evolution of international dispute resolution and the importance of individual representation in courts, but had left much of this behind to focus on dispute resolution more broadly. More recently, I have had the opportunity to think about a number of interesting co-existing features in the development of international law and dispute resolution. First, as I wrote about last year, it is a striking coincidence that as we worry about the “vanishing trial” in the U.S., the international scene has been exploding with new courts (WTO, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, etc.) and expanded case loads even for longer-standing courts (the ICJ, ECJ, ECHR, IACHR, etc.). This does not even include the multitude of other processes designed to deal with global conflict, including truth and reconciliations commissions like those in South Africa and in many South American countries. So, last spring at PON’s dispute system design symposium, I was able to broaden my perspective and think about the concerns and challenges faced by DSD when creating systems to deal with human rights conflicts and, what has been called, transitional justice situations. (Click here to see my draft article on this entitled Dispute System Design and Transitional Justice.)

My next step, the paper for this NYU symposium, will now look forward to where we go from here.