Although restorative justice is a new concept in Bangladesh (BD), resolving wrongdoing outside the criminal justice system is not a new practice. Community-based mediation, known as salish, has been practised for centuries – withstanding colonisation, adaptation and distortion. Other practices, such as village courts and customary justice, are also prevalent in Bangladesh. Of these, village courts are currently the most widely practised in Bangladesh. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ Bangladesh) formally introduced restorative justice in 2013 with the support of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs), NGOs, academics and government agencies. Most of the literature on community-based justice practice focuses on village courts; academic, peer-reviewed research on restorative justice in Bangladesh is scarce. This qualitative study explores the growth and development of restorative justice in Bangladesh. Using in-depth qualitative interviews and survey, the study retraces the genesis of restorative justice in Bangladesh. In recent times, GIZ Bangladesh has been key to the development of restorative justice, which was further expanded by UNDP’s Activating Village Courts project, as well as a graduate course on restorative justice at the University of Dhaka. This study also finds contentious themes raised by the key informants, specifically the role of INGOs, government and community.

Assumptions of linear progress and a clean break with the past have long characterised transitional justice interventions. This notion of temporality has increasingly been problematised in transitional justice scholarship and practice. Scholars have argued that a more complex understanding of temporalities is needed that better accommodates the temporal messiness and complexity of transitions, including their ongoingness, multilayeredness and multidirectionality. Existing critiques, however, have not yet resulted in a new conceptual framework for thinking about transitional temporalities. This article builds on insights from the field of restorative justice to develop such a framework. This framework foregrounds longer timelines, multilayered temporalities and temporal ecologies to better reflect reality on the ground and victims’ lived experiences. We argue that restorative justice is a useful starting point to develop such a temporal framework because of its actor-oriented, flexible and interactive nature and proximity to the field of transitional justice. Throughout this article we use the case of Chile to illustrate some of the complex temporal dynamics of transition and to illustrate what a more context-sensitive temporal lens could mean for such cases of unfinished transition.

Schools in the United States are implementing restorative justice practices that embrace student responsibility and reintegration to replace the zero-tolerance exclusionary policies popularised in the 1980s and 1990s. However, little is known about what factors are related to these and other restorative outcomes. The present study utilises 2017-2018 survey data (n = 1,313) across five West Michigan schools to determine how participant and restorative circle characteristics contribute to participant satisfaction within ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models. Findings show that several characteristics of restorative circles, including the number of participants, time spent in the restorative circle, number of times respondents have participated in a circle, and whether an agreement was reached, are significantly related to participant satisfaction. In addition, gender and participant role interact to have a significant effect on satisfaction. And models disaggregated by incident type indicate that the interaction between race and participant role has a significant effect on satisfaction, but only among restorative circles involving friendship issues. Suggestions for future research, as well as strategies aimed at improving participant satisfaction within restorative circles, are discussed.

Parties enter into contracts for obtaining specific contractual benefits, and, as a result, they engage in risk allocation hoping that each will keep to its promise. These expectations are sometimes shattered by a breach by one of the parties. The contract at times provides remedies for breach of contract. However, in most cases, the parties’ contract leaves the regulation of the breach to the governing law of the contract. The efficiency of a remedial rule can be judged from the balance that it has put in place in ensuring the risks involved in international transactions are not skewed against the breaching party just because it is in breach. This article thus makes a comparative study between the United Nations Convention on Contracts for International Sale of Goods (CISG), UNIDROIT (International Institute for the Unification of Private Law) Principles of International Commercial Contracts (the PICC) and Sales Act (Act No. 4 of 1955) of The Gambia (GSGA) on the right of a creditor to terminate a contract to elucidate the similarities and the differences among the three regimes and to determine which of the regimes provides a suitable contract law model for the international sales of goods. The article reviews and analyses the legal instruments, case law and academic writings under the regimes and concludes that the CISG provides the most suitable contract law model for the international sale of goods.

Having been exempted from a massive population exchange that took place between Greece and Turkey under the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), the Muslim minority of Western Thrace enjoys ever since a special status providing for the application of the Sharia law in family and succession matters, as well as the jurisdiction of the Mufti for the resolution of relevant disputes. A reform introduced by Law 4511/2018 marks a watershed moment in this long history. From now on, the Sharia law and the Mufti cease to be mandatory; their intervention requires the consent of the members of the minority, who also have the alternative to subject to the civil law and courts. This article tries to explore key features of the new model providing for an accommodation of the Muslim personal legal system based on choice. It focuses on the technique employed to structure the right of choice, on the proper ways for the exercise of choice, on the possibilities offered (or not) to make a partial choice only and revoke a previously made choice. In the end, a further question is raised, concerning how effective the right of choice may prove in the hands of women insiders, given that these are the most likely to experience pressure to demonstrate loyalty and not ignore the traditions and values – including the nomos – of their collective.

The phenomenon of evaluative mediation has invited much debate among both scholars and mediators. At the heart of that debate is the question of a definition of mediation. Considering all prevailing schools of mediation, the conclusion was that doctrine will not be able to prevent that mediation will continue to occur in all kinds of shapes and forms.

The terms forgiveness and reconciliation are not the most frequently used words at the corporate mediation table. However, having been a conflict advisor and mediator for the last 17 years in both corporate and criminal cases, I know that the phenomena of forgiveness and reconciliation exist in all domains. Forgiveness can be found in everyday life, in small gestures and words. While researching this article, I spoke to three corporate mediators to find out what forgiveness and reconciliation look like in their fields of work, and it turns out that they might indeed be more present than one might think.

This article describes the legal framework on corporate mediation in Italy with a particular focus on the effects of the mediation clauses included in company by-laws. The available data on the use of corporate mediation indicate that such clauses are not commonly used. There is still resistance among the parties in a dispute to engage in dialogue through mediation, not only where corporate disputes are concerned. The author suggests that one way to expand the use of mediation would be to promote the introduction of mediation clauses in the articles of association of companies. She also suggests that recent trends in company law, notably the emergence of sustainability issues, related to the impact of business activity on the environment and society, and more broadly on human rights, may create new opportunities for the use of mediation to prevent and solve corporate-related disputes.

As the scale of administrative agencies expands and their functions become more specialized in the complex and variable administrative reality, delegated legislation has increased explosively. This article examines the need for the introduction of appropriate parliamentary controls to prevent harm caused by the flood of delegated legislation. Through comparison with the UK Parliament, this article identifies the relative position of the Korean National Assembly and presents measures to strengthen parliamentary scrutiny on delegated legislation.

For the past 20 years, NCTDR has hosted a series of ODR Forums in locations around the world. For 2021, the Forum was held virtually, with live presentation over a web video platform, and recorded presentations available to participants. A full recording of the sessions can be found through http://odr.info/2021-virtual-odr-forum-now-live/. The following items are narrative notes from some of the presentations:

• David Allen Larson – ODR Accessibility

• Noam Ebner – Human Touch

• Jan Martinez & Amy Schmitz – ODR and Innovation

• Frank Fowlie – Online Sport Dispute Resolution

• Larry Bridgesmith – AI Introductory Notes

• Julie Sobowale – AI and Systemic Bias

• Clare Fowler – DEODRISE

• Michael Wolf – ODR 2.0 System Design

• Chris Draper – Algorithmic ODR

• Zbynek Loebl – Open ODR

This article addresses three issues related to online dispute resolution (ODR) that offer promise, and may carry risks for those who develop, provide, and use technology to address disputes and confects. The authors offer some principles to guide the use of technology, and some predictions about the future of ODR.

Whilst the coronavirus epidemic saw mediators turn to web conferencing in numbers to ensure mediations continued to take place, it is believed that the rate at which individual mediators, as opposed to organizations handling volumes of disputes, began to use online dispute resolution (ODR)-specific tools and platforms remained comparatively slow. Mediators may have felt that, in using web conferencing, they had made the move to ODR. Another hurdle standing in the way of generating confidence in ODR-specific tools is that exciting developments used the less were powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and yet mention of AI and algorithms would create its own barrier, in no small part due to examples of shortcomings with AI and algorithms outside of ODR. The writer feels that the future lies in developments in ODR that benefit from AI. However that is less the traditional meaning of the acronym being Artificial Intelligence but more as Augmented Intelligence. The paper explains the difference with Artificial Intelligence leaving the machine in control whilst Augmented Intelligence retains control and decision-making with the human but assisted by the machine to a degree or in a format not possible by the human alone. The paper highlights examples of two ODR systems applying Augmented Intelligence.

The challenges of developing meaningful environmental regulation to protect communities and the environment have never been greater. Environmental regulators are regularly criticised for failing to act hard and consistently, in turn leading to demands for harsher punishments and more rigorous enforcement. Whilst acknowledging the need for strong enforcement to address wantonly destructive practices threatening communities and ecosystems, we argue that restorative approaches have an important role. This article explores a future agenda for environmental restorative justice through (1) situating it within existing scholarly and practice-based environmental regulation traditions; (2) identifying key elements and (3) raising particular theoretical and practical challenges. Overall, our vision for environmental restorative justice is that its practices can permeate the entire regulatory spectrum, going far beyond restorative justice conferences within enforcement proceedings. We see it as a shared and inclusive vision that seeks to integrate, hybridise and build broader ownership for environmental restorative justice throughout existing regulatory practices and institutions, rather than creating parallel structures or paradigms.

The worldwide existing environmental conflicts have also given rise to worldwide environmental justice movements. Using a diversity of tools that range from petitions to legal actions, what such movements have often shown is that environmental conflicts rarely find a satisfactory resolution through criminal judicial avenues. Given this reality, the important question then is whether there is a place within environmental justice movements for a restorative justice approach, which would lead to the reparation or restoration of the environment and involve the offenders, the victims and other interested parties in the conflict transformation process. Based on the analysis of environmental conflicts collected by the Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade project (EJOLT), and more specifically on two emblematic environmental conflict cases in Nigeria and in Ecuador, the argument will be made that it is essentially due to the characteristics of environmental conflicts, and due to the fact that they almost never find a satisfactory resolution through traditional judicial avenues, that environmental justice movements ask for a restorative approach, and that restorative justice is a sine qua non condition to truly repair environmental injustices, as long as the worldview and nature of the victims is taken into consideration.