Since I was invited to contribute to Kluwer´s Mediation Blog I decided to follow the line of writing about all the possibilities of mediation in the corporate Brazilian market. This month would not be different. I invested a lot of time chasing data and information about the uses of mediation in the Intellectual Property sector….
Lack of flexibility is probably one of the most difficult obstacles to resolve any dispute. The absence of flexibility, limits the ability to reach agreements and ultimately makes the courts the only place where the dispute can find any kind of resolution. It is weird, therefore, that countries like Brazil have, in their legal systems,…
Part of my June was spent preparing for and being involved in a peer mediation initiative in Singapore called Peacemakers. This project was first run in 2010 and had as its purpose the goal of bringing the ideas of mediation and collaborative problem solving to young people. This initiative saw students (aged between 13 to…
On Friday 22 June 2012, the National Council of Bhutan unanimously enacted the Alternative Dispute Resolution Bill. As a result, the Kingdom of Bhutan joined the group of jurisdictions with a mediation/ADR-friendly regulatory framework. Bhutan is a small country, located on the southern slopes of the eastern Himalayas, populated by only approx. 700,000 people. Bhutanese…
It’s never easy to get a grasp on national statistics for mediation. The closest we come in the UK is a biennial (that’s once every two years, not twice a year!) survey carried out by CEDR, for which I for one am very grateful. The latest survey results have recently been released and these are…
In this post I want to talk about an important thread that is emerging in the science of the twenty-first century. It is the finding that we are all interconnected, that we are porous beings with the ability to influence not only ourselves but one another in ways not previously contemplated. What we previously knew…
On June 1, 2012, the revised version of the Swiss Rules on International Arbitration entered into force (see the recent following posts on the Kluwer Arbitration Blog: http://wolterskluwerblogs.com/blog/2012/05/31/revised-swiss-rules-of-international-arbitration-enter-into-force/ and http://wolterskluwerblogs.com/blog/2012/06/01/entry-into-force-of-the-revised-swiss-rules-of-international-arbitration-%E2%80%93-1-june-2012/). These new Rules (see text of the Swiss Rules at https://www.swissarbitration.org/sa/en/rules.php), based on the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules, were initially enacted in 2004 in order to…
When the airplane approaches the south zone of the city from the ocean side, flying into Rio is breathtaking. The sight of the long beaches, covered with white sand with the buildings in the background, perfectly framed by the green mountains is a pictorial representation of an idyllic place. From the top of the Sugar…
Scotland is a practical nation. The list of its inventions includes penicillin, anaesthetics, steam engines, tarmac roads and even the decimal point (see http://www.magicdragon.com/Wallace/thingscot.html#Ta). Like the rest of the UK its culture was in part forged by the ‘practical man’ of the Industrial Revolution, rejecting grand theory in favour of trial and error. Its lawyers,…
It is often said that listening is one of a mediator’s core skills. At the same time the parties’ ability to listen to each other is equally important. Where parties’ communication has broken down to such an extent that they are unable to really hear what each other is saying, mediators can step in and…
