Discussions in Dispute Resolution: The Coming of Age (2000-2009)

The U.S. judicial system is not merely a system of trials but a system of alternative means to resolution. Highlighting dispute resolution scholarship emphasizes the diverse ways of thinking available for resolving conflicts beyond traditional trials. In their first volume, Discussions in Dispute Resolution: The Foundational Articles (OUP 2021), the authors celebrated the field’s foundational writings and reflected on what makes those pieces so significant. In this second volume, Discussions in Dispute Resolution: The Coming of Age (2000-2009), they focus on the 16 most significant and influential articles on U.S. dispute resolution during its golden age of extraordinary growth. These articles shaped legal thinking about how the judicial system outsources the resolution of civil claims.

The heart of the book consists of short excerpts from these significant pieces, distilling them to their core ideas: the concepts, phrases, or findings that made them noteworthy. Four leading dispute resolution scholars (sometimes including the original author) then engage with different aspects of the articles’ ideas, recognizing their prescience and critiquing them where appropriate to answer the question: Why is this a significant work in the field?

By highlighting these influential works, the authors bring a fresh perspective, challenge them with the benefit of hindsight, engage with themes discussed in the first volume (such as disputant autonomy, access to justice, equal justice, changing views of legal and legalistic processes, and systemic impacts on processes and disputants), and compare the challenges of this era to those of the founding era.

Art Hinshaw is the Associate Dean for Experiential Learning, the John J. Bouma Fellow in Alternative Dispute Resolution, and a Clinical Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University. Dean Hinshaw is the founding director of the Lodestar Dispute Resolution Center, and his work has resulted in four books, 25 articles and book chapters, and four prestigious awards from the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution. Currently, he is a co-chair of the editorial board for the ABA’s Dispute Resolution Magazine and a regular contributor to Indisputably, the ADR law professor blog.

Andrea Kupfer Schneider is a professor of law and director of the Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution at Cardozo School of Law. Professor Schneider has published numerous textbooks, book chapters, and articles on negotiation, plea bargaining, negotiation pedagogy, ethics, gender, and international conflict. In 2024, Professor Schneider received the Rubin Theory to Practice Award given by the International Association of Conflict Management (IACM) and the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in 2017. She is a founding editor of Indisputably, the blog for ADR law faculty, and started the Dispute Resolution Works-in-Progress annual conferences in 2007. In 2016, she gave her first TEDx talk titled ＂Women Don’t Negotiate and Other Similar Nonsense.＂

Sarah Rudolph Cole is the Michael E. Moritz Chair in Alternative Dispute Resolution at the Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University. Professor Cole has authored numerous books and articles on dispute resolution. In 2013, she received the Ohio State Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching, and in 2024, she won the University of Puget Sound’s Distinguished Alumni Award for Lifetime Professional Achievement. In 2022, Professor Cole won CPR’s Outstanding Professional Article Award and, along with her co-authors on the first volume of this book, won the CPR Outstanding Book Award. In 2023, she received the ABA Section on Dispute Resolution’s Outstanding Scholarly Work Award.