New Campus Institute Studies Alternative Dispute Resolution
It’s a typical scenario in neighbor relations: one resident wants to cut down a tree straddling a common property line, one neighbor wants it to remain. Resolution to their problem could traditionally involve small claims court, lawyers, and the promise of escalating tensions. Through the research of a new institute at USF, alternative solutions to their problem could become more widely understood and available.
The California Dispute Resolution Institute (CDRI), which last spring moved from its downtown San Francisco office to become a program within USF’s Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good, is a six-year-old nonprofit devoted to sponsoring educational programs and researching and publishing information on mutually helpful, fair, and less expensive solutions to conflicts. Whether issues involve community relations, consumer disputes, divorce settlements, employment claims, or environmental practices, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is becoming a popular method to solve problems in a range of contentious areas.
“The law is set up as a series of rights and rights often come into conflict with each other. Typically there’s a winner and a loser,” said Robert Barrett, director of the institute. “ADR is about understanding the interests of both sides and working to find ways to accommodate them.”
CDRI concentrates on understanding the processes of equitable, neutral negotiating and on disseminating its research to community-based mediation organizations, state policymakers, arbitrators and professional mediators, activists, and consumers. In November, the institute hosted at USF the 10th annual ADR policy conference and this month it will host a meeting of community mediators from all over the state. As part of USF, the institute hopes to collaborate with students and faculty in mediation research as well as act as a campus resource for consensus building. It will also use some of the $1 million in federal money given to the McCarthy Center last year to make small faculty grants of its own for research on related topics.
“I think it’s a very fruitful combination to have CDRI and the McCarthy Center together,” said Law Professor Jay Folberg, who sat on the CDRI board of directors for several years and was instrumental in bringing CDRI to campus. “Where better to enhance the research and educational goals of the institute than at an urban university with a center for the common good?”
|
