Last week the long-awaited Irish Mediation Bill was finally published. Its purpose is to introduce a coherent comprehensive regulatory framework for mediation in Ireland. For a number of reasons it is interesting also for international readers. The hitherto mediation regulations in Ireland were criticized not only by experts but also by the local judiciary. In…

Mediation as a means to resolve disputes without the assistance of the court has become more and more popular in the post-Soviet bloc countries, for example Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania. The Law on Mediation in Lithuania was adopted by Parliament in 2008. Although enthusiasts of mediation welcomed the new law, mediation has not accelerated as…

On the 3rd of November 2016 Verkhovna Rada – the Parliament of Ukraine – voted for the draft law “On mediation” on the first reading. This is indeed an important event for Ukrainian mediators as they have been working hard towards it during the last eight years. All previous attempts to pass the law through…

Everywhere judicial policy makers are seeking new ways for the distribution of justice. In the Netherlands a project is underway to abolish all paperwork from the courts. Litigation will before long be conducted entirely digitally. In order to curtail government spending, experiments are being conducted to steer claimants away from the courts and become more…

With the Rio 2016 Olympics still on some of our minds, mediation in Brazil may seem like a star shining far, far away. However this distance may be closer than we think as Brazil is a country where new approaches and modalities are starting to be used to deal with disputes because, among other things,…

This blog synthesises some remarks I have made recently to policy-makers in Scotland. As I reflect on things, there are a lot of issues in the civil justice system in my country which remain of interest and concern. Not least, the number of ordinary folk caught up in the court system, paying a lot of…