Israel Reflections 2015–Day 7: Moty Cristal

One of the most interactive and influential speakers during the trip was Moty Cristal, the CEO of Next Consulting. Having begun his career as one of Israel’s leading negotiators, Moty now conducts international negotiation trainings for the private sector. He made time to speak to us at the Rabin Center and his lesson was among the favorites of the trip.  As our last speaker of the trip, I knew Moty would be a great wrap-up!

Student Sean A. McCarthy recalls his experience:

Moty Cristal has become one of the leading negotiation experts in Israel and my class was fortunate enough to meet with him in Tel Aviv.  He had the class participate in an exercise that involved three people dividing up a large sum of money amongst each other. Each role (A, B, and C) was given a different amount of bargaining power and rules for reaching an agreement. Moty formula (2)If all three individuals were able to come to an agreement, they could split up $121 million. However, if A and B reached an agreement, they would split $110 million; if A and C reached an agreement, they would split $84 million; and if B and C reached an agreement, they would split $50 million.

As a member of the A group, I realized that I was going into the exercise with virtually all of the negotiating power.  I was also fairly confident that a deal would be reached and that I would be a member of the deal. Ultimately, I was able to agree with B to split the $110 million with $26 million going to B and $92 million going to myself. During the debrief, I noticed that A was a party to all of the agreements reached, except for one. Many of the groups talked about how difficult it was to take the power away from A. In relation to international conflict, Moty explained that A groups could, in almost every situation, include the excluded party without losing anything themselves. This viewpoint—that while the pie can be expanded, ultimately some sharing is required for an agreement to be reached—was one of the most important lessons I learned on the trip.

Student Alex Evrard provides a different viewpoint on the experience:

During the exercise, I was a member of Nation C.  Going into the negotiation with two much more powerful nations, I had little room to negotiate an agreement in which I was not the nation left out.  Although my two opponents were inclusive and included me in an agreement, my fellow Nation C negotiators were not as fortunate; many of them reported back that they were left out of the final agreement. Moty’s lesson focused on how to negotiate while in a powerless situation. He told the group a story about the only time C was ever able to gain all of the money. In that situation, C was able to persuade his group members to agree to a coin flip. His lesson to the powerless negotiator was to negotiate as if there were no power. Instead of focusing on coalitions and the use of power, focus on the process of the agreement and working toward a solution that can benefit everyone. This was a wonderful exercise that left an impression on a good number of the students.

Continue ReadingIsrael Reflections 2015–Day 7: Moty Cristal

ACLU Attorney Says Tighter Voting Rules “Not Healthy” for Democracy

There was a sea change in the approach to election issues across America in the late 2000s, as Dale Ho sees it. He isn’t sure what the cause was, but he is sure it wasn’t a good development. Ho is director of the American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project, which makes him one of the leaders of legal opposition nationwide to tightening the rules on who can vote.

Ho told an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” session at Eckstein Hall on Wednesday that voting rights issues had largely drawn bipartisan support for decades.

“We had thought we had largely achieved a consensus in this country around universal suffrage, basic access for everyone (to voting),” Ho said. “Most of the debates about voting rights since the early 1970s were about redistricting – are the lines being drawn fairly for every community, are they being gerrymandered for partisan reasons, things like that. The trend remained toward greater liberalization in terms of ballot access. We didn’t see a lot of fights about registration and ballot access. .  . .

“In the late 2000s, something changed.”

Continue ReadingACLU Attorney Says Tighter Voting Rules “Not Healthy” for Democracy

Stanley Kutler, American Legal Historian

Stanley KutlerThe obituaries for Stanley Kutler, a retired University of Wisconsin professor who passed away on April 7, tended to stress Kutler’s large role in obtaining public access to the Nixon Watergate tapes. Only 63 hours of those tapes had been released before Kutler’s lawsuit against the National Archives and Records Administration, but his efforts resulted in the release of more than 3,000 additional hours. Kutler and other scholars were then able to use material on the tapes to detail the Nixon Administration’s frequent and sometimes shocking abuses of political power.

Unfortunately, the obituaries largely overlooked Kutler’s decades of extraordinary work as a legal historian. His numerous books and articles include Judicial Power and Reconstruction Politics (1969), Privilege and Creative Destruction: The Charles River Bridge Case (1971), and American Inquisition: Justice and Injustice in the Cold War (1984). All of these works explored specific cases in the context of broader historical movements. The facts and social complexities of the cases were always more important for Kutler than were the rules and corollaries spouted from one appellate bench or another.

Kutler’s work as a legal historian placed him at the center of the “new legal history” that emerged during the 1960s.

Continue ReadingStanley Kutler, American Legal Historian