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Article: Thinking about fairness & achieving balance in mediation.
- Article from:
- Fordham Urban Law Journal
- Article date:
- January 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Fordham Urban Law Journal. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Commentators and practitioners have questioned the possibility of achieving social justice through alternative dispute resolution ("ADR"). If fairness, particularly to an underrepresented group, is elusive where the outcome is leveraged by legal rights and decision-making is open to scrutiny, the prospect of fairness without those features seems doubly dim. (1) While increasing sophistication of alternative dispute problem-solving has proven its importance to achieving social justice, (2) the concern in each ADR situation remains that the supposed neutral third party (3) may not be neutral, and that the power dynamics among parties operate to disadvantage the ...