Rafal Morek’s post last month, Investor-state disputes: how arbitration and mediation can intertwine to provide more resonant solutions, emphasized the increasing use of mediation to resolve investor-state disputes, albeit still confined to a small number of cases under the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) Convention. As the late Professor Derek Roebuck noted in The Myth of Modern Mediation in 2007: “Everywhere in the Ancient Greek world, including Ptolemaic Egypt, arbitration was normal and in arbitration the mediation element was primary.” Switching hats So ..read more

As I mentioned before in some posts here at Kluwer, according to the Brazilian National Council of Justice, there are close to 90 million lawsuits currently in course in the country. Moreover, on average, it takes around 10 years for a lawsuit to reach closure if all appeals have been exhausted. Interestingly enough , one of the biggest litigators in Brazil is the State. According to a study published by Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa Insper, by the end of 2020, Brazil has already exceeded the mark of R$ 5.5 trillion in tax debts undergoing judicial and administrative disputes at Federal, Stat ..read more

Mediation has long been used as a method of resolving disputes. Indeed, the practice of combining mediation and arbitration by the same neutral has been traced back to ancient Greece and Ptolemaic Egypt[1]. In his paper “Varieties of Dispute Processing”, presented to the 1976 Pound Conference, Harvard Professor Frank E.A. Sander proposed that, instead of regarding litigation as the default, disputants might be steered to the dispute resolution processes appropriate to the circumstances of their dispute. His paper envisioned “by the year 2000, not merely a courthouse but a Dispute Resolution C ..read more

Do you like this pair of cufflinks? This blog post is my sharing on how I had managed to purchase this pair of cufflinks in Melbourne.   I had taken a break in late October to travel to Melbourne to see my son who is doing a master’s degree there. On 26 October 2023, we walked past the court areas in Londale Street for lunch. While I was waiting for the traffic lights, I saw several mannequins wearing judge and barrister robes on the mezzanine floor of a building. Out of curiosity, I decided to pay a visit to the place after lunch in order to find out more about it.   It is a clothi ..read more

Ms Machimdhorn Khampiranont (“MA”) is the Acting Managing Director of Thailand Arbitration Center (“THAC”), which has been set up to support and provide neutral and independent alternative dispute resolution services of international standards. Prior to holding the present position as THAC’s Acting Managing Director, MA was initially appointed as THAC’s Registrar and subsequently became the THAC’s Deputy Managing Director as well as THAC’s Acting Director of Arbitration and Mediation. MA had the experience of advising lawyers in a considerable number of arbitration cases and proceedings admini ..read more

This article was prepared by Mahmoud Arif and Constantin-Adi Gavrilă. Picture any school in any community in the world, and you are sure to imagine a group of children learning and playing. Whenever there is interaction, there will always be room for conflict. How do children manage conflict? This question is difficult to answer, as the presence of adults in an environment such as a school means a great deal of influence or, better said, interference that shapes the children’s approach to conflict and the resolution of issues. Regardless of cultural or situational variations, the consistent as ..read more

In 2017, I wrote one of my most read articles on Kluwer: Elementary my dear Watson! At that time, artificial intelligence (AI) had already invaded our lives and much was being discussed about its potential to replace human beings. In my article, I wondered about the possibility of AI replacing the mediator. And the answer, in my point of view, at that time was that AI would not replace humans. Only six years have gone by and we face the speedy progress of AI and ChatGPT (a part of artificial intelligence system capable of creating original and new content, such as texts, images, music and even ..read more

There are usually numerous issues to be resolved in mediated commercial disputes, for example: whether a relationship should be continued or terminated and, on what basis; the terms upon which any litigation should be settled; what, if any, money should be paid by one party to the other and, if so, when and how. It can be frustrating when the parties get stuck on the amount of money to be paid when everything else appears to be virtually resolved. The challenge of the impasse over the money Mediators often find themselves carrying offers from one room to another (whether face-to-face or, mo ..read more

What is Cab Rank Rule? The Four Bars (namely, England and Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland) have recently issued a joint statement on the cab rank rule. According to the statement, the cab rank rule mandates barristers not to discriminate between clients, and that they must take on any case provided that it is within their competence and they are available and appropriately remunerated. Besides, the Four Bars re-affirm in their statement their commitment to the cab rank rule because it:-   promotes access to justice; recognises that it is for the judges and juries to decide ..read more

The inspiration for this month’s post came from the recently released news on social media, which attracted a lot of attention because it involved the mediation carried on during the divorce process of a famous couple. This mediation procedure has been questioned and has generated a lot of debate in the mediation community. My comments on this specific case are based on what is in the media so far; however, I believe we have already enough information to reflect and contribute to this debate. In other words, the starting point to our discussion is the limit between the professional’s role as a ..read more