With few exceptions, mediation is still used in less than 1% of the cases that are pending in the courts of justice from Romania and of other European Union member states. Public policies and adopted legislative solutions are not capable of generating a culture of dialogue, conflict prevention, or amicable settlement. In this context, the…
Although infrequent, court cases against mediators are illuminating, helping us avoid being dragged into court ourselves. Here’s an example In Tapoohi v Lewenberg & Ors (No 2) [2003] VSC 410, the Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia, considered it arguable that a mediator owes a duty of care to the disputants. The mediated dispute This was…
Romanian mediators are called on the 2nd and the 3rd of March 2019 to vote for the election of the members of the Romanian Mediation Council. Nine members and three alternates of the Mediation Council 2019-2023 will be elected for a four-year term by 4821 mediators that are authorized for practice in Romania. At the…
“It is pointless to do with more what can be done with fewer.” William of Ockham A colleague recently asked me to present a workshop to employment mediators on ‘Time Limited Mediation.’ Until that moment, like Molière’s bourgeois gentleman realising he’s been speaking prose all his life, it hadn’t occurred to me that this was…
We Australians love sport in general and cricket in particular. Unless you have been living in a cave, with no access to any media reporting whatsoever, you will know that the Australian cricket team is under a cloud. Saturday March 24th 2018 was the third day of the third cricket test between Australia and South…
On August 20, 1940, in Mexico City, Ramon Mercader drove and ice-axe into the skull of Leon Trotsky, ending the life of one of the most ruthless revolutionaries of the twentieth century. Mercader, it was discovered much later, acted on the orders of Joseph Stalin another of the century’s most ruthless leaders. The path that…
The Dilemma: At an initial private meeting with a lawyer and his lay client in a mediation, it became obvious to the mediator that he had previously mediated in a matter which was related to the present dispute, the outcome of which was not known to the present parties. In the mediator’s view, it had…
I was outside a city-centre store in the drizzle and dark two days ago, wondering whether my brain was made for better things than standing reflecting on waiting for my wife to emerge from a busy shop with another last-minute Christmas present. The human brain is a wondrous thing; we waste its powers in the…
In this blog I discuss the rise of ODR (online dispute resolution). I review recent developments including a live, online Brexit negotiation, which point to a mainstream future. I conclude that ODR will become an integral part of the justice system. When Frank Sander coined the term ‘Alternative Dispute Resolution’ his relatively modest proposal placed…
Julian Baggini’s recently published book “How the world thinks” is a history of global philosophy, looking at how thinking has developed in different places and times. In the introduction he highlights the importance of not just seeing something from another’s perspective, but trying to see what they are seeing as well. As he puts it:…
