Natural helpers: a community approach to harm reduction

This paper, by Jennifer Taylor and Theresa Jasperson, looks at a successful harm-reduction initiative developed by Streetworks, a needle exchange program in Edmonton, Alberta. The Natural Helpers initiative provides and enhances the skills, knowledge, resources, and support that people who use injection drugs need in order to take care of others in their community. The evolution of the project, from its inception to the present situation, is described.     

EU Constitutionalism in Flux: Is the Eurozone Crisis Precipitating Centralisation or Diffusion?

The Lisbon Treaty was supposed to mark the end of an almost‐decade‐long period of treaty reform. After the tumult of the failed Constitutional Treaty, the settlement it imposed struck a sustainable balance between the competing forces of centralisation and the diffusion that characterise European integration. Yet this constitutional settlement is now threatened by the Eurozone debt crisis and official responses to it, most notably the proposed fiscal compact. A prevalent view regards the crisis as an opportunity to complete the process of political and economic union that the Maastricht Treaty began. However, this article cautions against such a view, which would jettison the post‐Lisbon Treaty constitutional settlement in favour a peculiar kind of German‐led, intergovernmental centralisation. Whether the crisis response measures achieve their stated aims remains to be seen, but the integration project will be reconfigured in the process. Thus, EU constitutionalism is bound to remain in a state of flux.     

EARLY NEUTRAL EVALUATIONS: APPLICATIONS TO CUSTODY AND PARENTING TIME CASES PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION IN HENNEPIN COUNTY,MINNESOTA

A program to apply Early Neutral Evaluation (ENE), a confidential, settlement‐oriented and accelerated alternative dispute resolution technique, to child custody and parenting time cases has been cooperatively developed by Hennepin county Family Court Services and the Minnesota Fourth Judicial District Family Court. Parties are referred by the court to a male/female team of experienced neutral evaluators for early feedback on the probable outcome of a full evaluation and an opportunity to negotiate a settlement. It has proven to be a highly successful program in its first 2 years, with the majority of cases reaching an early settlement. The ENE program reduces the stress and expense of custody disputes for clients, expedites judicial case management, maximizes Family Court Services staff efficiency, and focuses subsequent evaluations on critical issues.     

行政争议的中立评估及其制度构建

行政争议的中立评估机制是指由具备专门解纷知识的中立评估员对纠纷进入行政复议、行政诉讼等渠道的审理前景进行预测的一种制度。它能在降低当事人过高的解纷期望、促成当事人之间达成和解、克服评估式调解的弊端等方面发挥积极作用,亟待引入我国行政争议解决领域之中。中立评估机制处于合意型行政争议解决机制与决定型行政争议解决机制的连接点...     

乡族与中国近代水权纠纷解决

乡族在近代中国基层水权运行与水权纠纷解决过程中扮演着重要的角色。较大的乡族会利用优势地位，控制水源、操纵水权分配、掌控水利组织、主导水利祭祀、垄断水权资料，进而控制地方社会。同时，乡族对水权运行和水权纠纷的态度以及配合程度对水权管理的影响极大。水权纠纷解决之后所面临的执行问题，对地方水利社会是一个真正的难题。而在这一过程中，如果分水方案对某一乡族不利，则会采取一切措施阻挠相关方案的实施；反之，则会积极配合。因此，乡族对水权运行、水权纠纷解决的作用是双重的，既有利于水权运行的一面，又有阻碍水权运行的一面。     

FAMILY/CHILD JUDICIAL DISPUTE RESOLUTION (JDR)

This article outlines the Pilot Project in Pre-trial Judicial Settlement Conferencing in Family and Child Welfare/Protection Matters, which was designed and implemented by the authors, The Honourable Judge Nancy A. Flatters of the Provincial Court of Alberta, Family and Youth Court, at Calgary. The article also outlines the basis, rationale, and development underlying this emerging nontraditional judicial approach to the resolution of these disputes and the resulting settlement outcomes.     

Chapter 2: Pay Now So You Won't Pay Later: The Effectiveness of Prevention Programming in the Fight to Reduce Delinquency

Community-based delinquency prevention programs, designed to work with youth and families before they become involved with the official court process, are relatively rare. Likewise, few studies have been published concerninge valuative research on such programs. This article reviews some background on program concepts, describes the operations of the Oakland County Probate Court Youth Assistance casework services program, and reports the results of a comprehensive program evaluation project. The findings suggest that prevention programming is one effective strategy to aid in reducing the likelihood of more costly court interventions. Recommendations for program development are offered.     

The Interdisciplinary Settlement Conference: A Grassroots Alternative for Resolving High‐Conflict Parenting Disputes in Lean Times

This article describes a court‐connected alternative dispute resolution program, the Interdisciplinary Settlement Conference. The key feature of this program is the participation of two volunteer panelists, one a family law attorney and the other a mental health professional experienced in parenting disputes, who assist the judicial officer in working with the parties and their attorneys (if any) to reach a resolution of their parenting dispute. Significantly, in addition to addressing the parties’ legal issues, the panelists also address the parties’ psychological and emotional issues relevant to the dispute on an as‐needed basis. Findings from six years of experience with the program are discussed, including evidence of high satisfaction with the program, a high rate of settlement, a decrease in relitigation, and a concomitant savings of scarce judicial resources.     

Online Dispute Resolution and Bargaining

The automated negotiation process seems to be a powerful mechanism to resolve disputes arising from Internet-based transactions. Automated negotiation is an online blind-bidding process in which an automated algorithm evaluates bids from the parties and settles the case if the offers are within a prescribed range. Following the arguments of the dispute resolution professionals, the main advantage of this procedure is to promote natural agreements by restoring the parties' right to negotiate on their own, without the presence of a third party in the shadow of negotiations. Our purpose is to investigate this issue by modelling the automated negotiation process as a two-person bargaining game under incomplete information. A first result states that, given incomplete information, not all mutually beneficial agreements can be attained via the procedure. Furthermore, the settlement rule has a drastic effect on the players' strategies, which induces that the automated negotiation process does not significantly increase the likelihood of a settlement. The ability of the procedure to generate efficiency is only due to the costs imposed on parties if a disagreement occurs, that is the combination of players' risk aversion and uncertainty.     

Merger settlement as a screening device

This article presents an economic model of judicial settlement in an asymmetric information setting to analyze the merger settlement between merging firms and a competition authority. The model analyzes how the competition authority may use the settlement process to screen out efficient mergers from inefficient ones. Because of the self-selection among merging firms, efficient mergers may be litigated in court, whereas inefficient mergers may be settled before going to trial. We further analyze the role and the effect of the second request in a merger settlement.     

ROCK‐PAPER‐SCISSORS: PLAYING THE ODDS WITH THE LAW OF CHILD RELOCATION

This article offers for inspection the proposition that the adversarial evidence‐based litigation process is unsuitable for resolving custody cases in general and relocation cases in particular. It analyzes the leading cases from New York, Massachusetts, California, England, Canada, and Australia. It reaches a conclusion that no jurisdiction has devised a legal standard or formula that enables a judge to predict the future best interest of a child if that child is allowed to relocate with one parent away from the other. For this reason, the court has a duty to offer as sophisticated and friendly a settlement process and atmosphere as possible. However, knowing that judges will still be required to resolve these difficult cases because they often seem impervious to settlement, the article offers thirty‐six factors that a court should consider in all move‐away cases. By relying on each of these factors that is relevant to the case, the parents will have an understanding of why the decision was made the way it was and it will also allow for effective appellate review.     

FAMILY COURT–UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIP TO BENEFIT DIVORCING FAMILIES: THE EXPERIENCE OF MARICOPA COUNTY (ARIZONA) FAMILY COURT DEPARTMENT AND ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY'S PREVENTION RESEARCH CENTER*

Using evidence‐based methods to help divorcing families requires the combined best efforts of legal professionals, courts, judges and administrators, mental health oriented service providers, and university researchers. Collaborative program development, implementation, and evaluation involve a complicated process of negotiation between professionals, yet this process is hardly ever described. The current article describes the processes we underwent in forging an alliance of researchers from Arizona State University's Prevention Research Center with professionals from the Maricopa County (Arizona) Family Court, a collaboration that involved a true dialogue and cooperation from the earliest stages and continuing throughout the project. A Community‐Based Participatory Research model was the underlying basis for our partnership; its lynchpin device was a Joint Planning Committee.     

CHILD PROTECTION MEDIATION: A 25-YEAR PERSPECTIVE

This article reviews the creation, development, and growth of child protection mediation (CPM) in the United States. Starting with a few pilot projects in the 1970s, CPM has grown throughout the country. The article traces child protection's development through the publication of the Resource Guidelines and Model Courts and then discusses what the necessary ingredients for a mediation program are. Mediation is then discussed from a judicial perspective. Barriers to mediation are listed, followed by a discussion of special issues that arise when developing and maintaining CPM programs. The article concludes with the observation that CPM is now recognized as a best practice by most judges and court improvement professionals and that it continues to grow.     

RESPONDING TO THE CALL FOR CHILD CUSTODY EVALUATORS TO JUSTIFY THE REASON FOR THEIR PROFESSIONAL EXISTENCE: SOME THOUGHTS ON KELLY AND RAMSEY (2009)

Kelly and Ramsey (2009 ) propose that it is time to examine the costs and benefits courts and participants derive from child custody evaluations. A structure for a research program was suggested. This article endorses this call for such an examination on the system that provides for forensic mental health evaluations for custody disputes. There is a need to examine the costs and benefits of various types of approaches that are emerging, including the comprehensive evaluation and brief, focused evaluations. This article suggests that there is a need for forensic quality control of the work product that is produced by evaluators. Courts are cognizant of the need to encourage settlement between parties, but they also need to be accurate in making judicial determinations that will be in the best interests of children. Quality evaluations are a cornerstone in working toward this goal. Kelly and Ramsey are mindful of the need for evaluations to facilitate settlement, but also to get it right for the court on accurate predictions about children's developmental outcomes.     

SETTLEMENT‐FOCUSED PARENTING PLAN CONSULTATIONS: AN EVALUATIVE MEDIATION ALTERNATIVE TO CHILD CUSTODY EVALUATIONS

The divorce mediation field has recently seen the development of several “hybrid” alternative dispute resolution approaches to child custody disputes. The “settlement‐focused parenting plan consultation” (SFPPC) is a form of evaluative mediation, conducted by a “parenting plan consultant” (PPC), who possesses the combined expertise of a mediator and child custody evaluator. This hybrid model is a more expedient and considerably less expensive approach than a child custody evaluation, but preserves the hallmark mediation principle of self‐determination. The article describes the theory underlying the SFPPC, delineates the role requirements, procedures, and techniques of the parenting plan consultant, and addresses legal and ethical issues.     

The Duration of Litigation

This paper analyzes the duration of litigation. The analysis of court congestion by Posner (1972) and Priest (1989) suggests that the effects of delay reduction programs may be only transitory, because initial improvements may be swamped by an offsetting increase in demand for litigation. However, we find some evidence that time to settlement was reduced in a Michigan court by a program that provided for early intervention in each case by a judge who imposed a time schedule on major events of the litigation.
Using two new data sets on personal injury claims, we find that the time to settlement increases with the amount at stake but is sharply reduced when the case is referred to a specialist in personal injury litigation. Estimates of a duration model indicate that the likelihood of settlement is increased by the completion of discovery and especially by the settlement conference. We find that the hazard of settlement increases as the case gets closer to trial. This finding is in accord with the "deadline effect" derived from certain bargaining models.     

The importance of teaching dispute resolution in a twenty-first-century law school

Civil justice reviews over the past 20 years have encouraged the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and particularly mediation. Mediation is arguably now becoming more mainstream in terms of dispute resolution process choice. In some instances law changes have been introduced requiring parties in dispute to consider using mediation; similarly, lawyers have an ethical responsibility to provide advice to their clients about the range of dispute resolution processes available. What is lacking however is a corresponding appreciation of the changing attitudes to the teaching of dispute resolution in the majority of UK law schools, where the promotion of adversarialism within the curriculum appears to remain the focus as the primary and only method of dispute resolution. The article argues that this is unreflective of current attitudes and thinking towards dispute resolution in most common law countries, where litigation is no longer necessarily the primary dispute resolution process of choice. Whilst there was token appreciation of the importance of mediation advocacy and its inclusion recommended within the Bar Practice Training Course (BPTC), the recent Legal Education and Training Review was silent on any suggestions about the inclusion of dispute resolution based curriculum content at any stage of legal education in England and Wales. The article will explore the historical development of lawyers’ attitudes to dispute resolution within the civil justice arena and academics’ teaching of curriculum associated with it in UK law schools. The article will pose questions on why recent legal history suggests that law schools should now perhaps take a more socio-legal approach to their curriculum content and embrace the teaching of dispute resolution as a defined subject area for the twenty-first-century law school.     

The ‘Short Addiction Program’: experiences from an intervention by the correctional services in Norway

Do participants in a short term training program in prison find that it helps them to cope with their addiction better than before? This article explores the effects of a pilot project conducted in two Norwegian prisons. The study is based on interviews with 16 participants. The data show that the program increased inmates’ motivation and provided them with better tools to deal with their addiction. The conclusion is therefore that this kind of program could be the first step towards enabling prisoners with addictions to cope better with the challenges involved.     

MEDIATOR STRATEGIES FOR LAWYERS

This article explores the use of a four-way conference by attorneys to effect settlement. The author describes the process, analyzes factors leading to success, and gives a case example.     

Imbalances of Power in ADR: The Impact of Representation and Dispute Resolution Method on Case Outcomes

In recent decades, alternative dispute resolution processes have gained worldwide recognition, a growing role in legal practice, and increasing academic attention. Despite their professed advantages, they have also faced fierce opposition. In a seminal article, Owen Fiss argued that ADR exacerbates imbalances of power between the parties. But while the theoretical argument has been widely developed, empirical evidence has remained scant. This article empirically examines the impact of representation patterns and dispute resolution methods on case outcomes. Arguably, professional representation of weaker parties may reduce the effects of inequality, whereas less formal, transparent, and adjudicatory processes may exacerbate them. The article focuses on small claims settlement conferences, using the Israeli labor courts system as a test case. The main findings are that representation increases the probability of a successful settlement conference, and that the more formal the process, the greater the ratio between the sum obtained by the plaintiff and the sum claimed.