On 6 August 2019, the Singapore Convention on Mediation was announced. The Convention parallels the New York Convention for arbitration by moving to legitimize mediation as a dispute resolution method for international commercial transactions. The Convention tries, in particular, to address the enforceability of mediation settlements by referring to the application of mediation ‘standards’ in Article 5 (e). Mediation standards have been a controversial topic in professional circles since the rise of mediation as an alternative dispute resolution process, because of the extreme diversity of mediation approaches across the world. We argue that all stakeholders in the mediation ecosystem should focus on creating a ‘Code of Disclosure’ as a complement to the Singapore Convention, that such a ‘Code of Disclosure’ may be the first step towards a future ‘Uniform Code of Conduct’, and that a code of disclosure will bring certainty to parties about the international commercial mediation process, which is a key prerequisite for its true adoption.

Infractions are the most voluminous case type in most court locations. Through two initiatives funded by the National Highway Safety Administration, namely eCitation and On-line Disposition, the Connecticut Judicial Branch has been able to establish a comprehensive electronic citation and adjudication platform during a time of significant budgetary challenges.

The EU internal market has undergone several developments in the past decades. One of the main developments is the inclusion of a digital dimension. One of the fields in which these developments are very evident is the consumer market. A further development of e-commerce is however hindered because there are no suitable redress mechanisms for consumers involved in low-value, high volume claims typically arising from e-commerce transactions. In response to the ills of existing redress mechanisms, an emerging trend of consumer alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and consumer online dispute resolution (ODR) schemes has been identified throughout the Member States (MS) aimed to offer consumers a swift, cheap and simple procedure through which they can enforce their rightsThis paper outlines the EU approach to Consumer ADR/ODR, gives some observations of the functioning of the legislation in practice and concludes with some thoughts for the future.

Getting cases decided in court within a reasonable time is a problem in many countries and in some cases can present a veritable crisis of justice. An alternative that is commonly used in judicial proceedings (at least in many civil law countries) is to hold a preliminary hearing in order to encourage a settlement. This article aims to analyse online dispute resolution as an efficient alternative to resolve the crisis of justice in Brazil.

Using a participatory design approach supports initiatives seeking to advance access to justice, whether they be policy, service or solution-oriented. A participatory design approach can be used effectively irrespective of whether your perspective towards access to justice is as a court employee, a private practitioner (attorney, mediator), a legal aid or human service agency professional, an academic or a technologist.

Canadian courts and tribunals are successfully incorporating online dispute resolution (ODR) mechanisms into their processes in order to offer user-centric dispute resolution systems aimed at increasing access to justice. Although they use different approaches, three such examples, British Columbia’s Civil Resolution Tribunal, Ontario’s Condominium Authority Tribunal, and Quebec’s PARLe-OPC platform, have all demonstrated how public ODR can increase litigants’ sense of justice while respecting basic legal tenets. This article serves as a short introduction to this user-centric Canadian approach.

As ODR rolls out in courts across the United States, we need to learn more about how litigants experience it. This is particularly true about their experience of access to justice, which is a primary motivator for courts to adopt ODR. This article discusses plans for an evaluation Resolution Systems Institute and the University of California, Davis, will be conducting of ODR programmes in Hawaii and Texas for small claims cases.

This article was adapted from a presentation at the ODR Forum 2019 in Williamsburg.

In 2015 the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators (CCJ/COSCA), representing the leadership of the state court systems of the United States, adopted the following goal for access to justice for civil legal issues.

[…] the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators support the aspirational goal of 100 percent access to effective assistance for essential civil legal needs.

The International Conflict Resolution Community has developed considerable theory and many case studies about ripeness and readiness for mediation. Readiness involves a readiness of the disputant to resolve the conflict, while ripeness indicates the time is appropriate to attempt a resolution. There is a sparse amount of theory about these issues in commercial and family dispute resolution (FDR). We discuss the practice of readiness for mediation, FDR and online dispute resolution and develop practices about when to mediate such disputes – especially when domestic violence has occurred.

The European Commission recently conducted a public consultation on the measures that may be taken to ensure the full application of the principle of equal pay between women and men. Its evaluation report is expected before the end of this year. The new Swiss legislation on monitoring and disclosure of the gender pay gap may be inspiration for future EU initiatives in this area.