APPENDIX D: FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS ABOUT
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ADR
AND THE COURTS
Excerpted from:
Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Pursuing Settlement in an Adversary Culture: A Tale
of Innovation Co-opted or the Law of ADR (1991), 19 Fl. St. U.L.Rev. 1, at 4-5.
1.
What are the values of settlement and of adjudication?
2.
When is a court not a court? What makes a court a special institution and what
should it be doing? Related to these concerns are issues of legal authority for the
variations on court adjudication when a court can order someone to settle, require a
juror to serve a non-juror function, or exclude the public from a proceedings?
3.
What values should a court institutionalized ADR device serve? Who should pay? Who
should have access? What are the consequences of using ADR devices for the rest of
the system? When should a public sy stem subsidize private agreements?
4.
What are the politics of ADR? Are there patterns of usage? Do particular kinds of
clients choose different processes? Are there differences between big cases and small
cases, or in the choices of wealthy clients and poorer clients?
5.
What should be the system or values implicated in case allocation should it be a fair
market? Should there be restrictions or regulations of case types? Should these
programs be voluntary or mandatory?
6.
How can we measure the effects of different allocations or assignments to particular
processes? How should we measure the quality of justice?
7.
What processes are appropriate within our system of dispute resolution? When is
adversarialness appropriate, and when is it not? What other processes can be used
while preserving our long tradition of process-fairness and rights protection?
8.
On what basis should cases be settled, decided, or tried by considering only legal
rules, personal needs, or economic expediency?