Comparative Dispute Resolution

Comparative Dispute Resolution offers an original, wide-ranging, and invaluable corpus of essays on dispute resolution. Enriched by a broad, comparative vision and a focus on the processes used to handle disputes, this study adds significantly to the discourse around comparative legal studies.From a comparative perspective, this Research Handbook analyses the field of dispute processing, generally and across a broad range of legal systems and their legal cultures. It explores the nature of disputes and the range of basic processes used in their resolution, examining emerging issues in theory and practice and analysing differing traditions of dispute resolution and their 'modernisation'. Offering a balanced combination of theory and praxis, chapters present new understandings of theoretical, comparative and transnational dimensions of the manner in which societies and their legal systems respond to difficulties in social relations.Showcasing opportunities for new research and debate, Comparative Dispute Resolution will be helpful to practitioners and those engaged in the practise of handling disputes. Students and scholars in disciplines such as law, sociology, politics and psychology will also find this topical Research Handbook useful in their understanding of the theory and practice of disputing and dispute management, legal reform and enhanced access to justice.

‘This volume is an important and timely contribution to the growing literature on comparative dispute resolution which has been made even more important by the adoption of the Singapore Convention on Mediation in 2019 and the acceleration of the use of online dispute resolution processes due to the appearance of COVID 19. The editors and contributors deserve recognition for their achievement in providing this rich resource for us.’, 'This is an impressive volume, both in terms of coverage and depth, offering a rich variety of intellectual perspectives on a wide spectrum of dispute resolution processes, including processes of avoidance, negotiation, mediation, umpiring, hybrid processes and self-help. In doing so, this compendium brings together a wide variety of anthropological viewpoints from many top scholars in this field, providing new insights of theoretical, comparative and transnational dimensions, which observe how the culture and social context are often very significant.', 'An astonishingly broad-reaching and multidisciplinary collection of essays that connects readers back to classic historical, anthropological, and jurisprudential studies of disputing; across legal systems in Africa, Asia, North and South America, and Europe and across processes such as negotiation, mediation, arbitration, but also avoidance and violence. It also moves forward to contemporary issues including new relations between technologies and humans and the transformation of courts from the inside. Together, these essays offer fresh comparative insights that challenge conventional understandings of the boundaries among law, disputing, and the state.',

Edited by Maria Federica Moscati, Senior Lecturer, School of Law, University of Sussex, UK, Michael Palmer, Emeritus Professor of Law, SOAS, and Senior Research Fellow, IALS, University of London, UK, Senior Research Fellow, Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies (HKIAPS), Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Cheng Yu Tung Visiting Professor of Law, University of Hong Kong and Marian Roberts, practising family mediator, SE London Family Mediation Bureau and an Adviser to the College of Mediators, UK