Russ Bleemer of the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (CPR) has done us all a great service in posting four excellent articles on Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s rulings on commercial arbitration. I encourage those interested to visit http://www.cpradr.org/tabid/45/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/498/Default.aspx.
This Article first appeared in New York Dispute Resolution Lawyer (2009).
On May 21, 2008, the European Parliament enacted a Directive to encourage the use of mediation in civil and commercial matters, and to make uniform throughout the European Union the legal status of certain attributes of that practice. The Directive culminated a ten-year process that occasioned each member state within the European community to consider the role of mediation in commercial affairs, and to take a position on the minimum requirements of the use of commercial mediation throughout the region.
The Directive represents an intentional effort, on a pan-European scale, to achieve a degree of homogeny and predictability in the treatment of mediated resolutions of commercial disputes. Such a singular event deserves study, encouragement and support.
This article was first published in Contemporary Issues in International Arbitration and Mediation: The 2008 Fordham Papers (2009)
The rise of China as a trade partner to the United States, and the legal and commercial ramifications of this phenomenon, have been widely observed and commented upon. This article relates some experiences that the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (“CPR Institute”) has had with respect to encouraging commercial mediation in China, and suggests some lessons learned from those experiences. It concludes that Western concepts of mediated negotiation may have fundamental cultural limitations that require participants in the process to be open to shifting their understanding of the mediation process itself and of dispute resolution generally.
This article appears in the April 2009 edition of the Mediation Newsletter of the International Bar Association.
An entire day of the 2008 IBA Conference in Buenos Aires was devoted to the topic of the interrelationship among Corporate Governance, Corporate Social Responsibility and Human Rights. Organized by James E. Brumm, A. Jan Eijsbouts and John F. Sherman, III, one focus of the discussion was the Report of John Ruggie, the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations, titled “Protect, Respect and Remedy: a Framework for Business and Human Rights” (the “Ruggie Report”).