Why Suppose? Let's Find Out: A Public Policy Research Program on Dispute Resolution
This paper argues for a research program examining control over dispute system design and models of mediation to determine how to best structure mediation in court-connected programs.
The handbook of dispute resolution
Most parties in a dispute eventually face a decision problem: whether to settle their dispute upon certain terms or not. Whether negotiating toward settlement directly or with the assistance of counsel and a mediator, parties are best able to make decisions in their own best interest if they understand their alternatives. Those alternatives necessarily include possible outcomes of the litigation process and their anticipated effect, as well as the proffered settlement and its anticipated effect. To this end, decision analysis or risk analysis 1 presents an important opportunity for the parties who want to assess the relative values of their alternatives. This article does not suggest that quantitative comparisons of the dollar values of a party's alternatives represent the only wise way to make a decision. An individual party might wisely decide to reject a significant settlement offer for a claim of modest dollar value in favor of the personal, emotional satisfaction of watching the defendant's executives being cross examined, or the goal of exposing alleged corporate immorality. That might be exactly the right decision, numbers analysis aside. However, I believe that all parties (and their lawyers) benefit from thoughtful analysis of their alternatives through careful and rigorous consideration of the value and cost to them of settlement options and of the embedded risks and possible outcomes of the litigation process. Settlements are truly informed and voluntary only if the parties choose them with a full understanding of their
Discussions and Reviews : Intermediaries: additional thoughts on third parties
or interdependent decision-making. Strategic behavior is the behavior of any individual member of a group involving a choice of action contingent upon that individual’s estimates of the actions (or choices) of others in the group, where the actions of each of the relevant others are based upon a similar estimate of the behavior of group members other than himself (Frohlich, Oppenheimer, and Young, 1971). And strategic interaction is simply the set of