Abstract

Court-connected mediated agreements seem to both fulfil and fail the ideal of self-determination in mediation theory. In a study of 134 agreements from court-connected mediation, we found that the majority of agreements contain creative elements and display great variation in the provisions they contain. These results indicate that the parties play an important role in crafting the substance of their agreements. However, we also found that the wording of the agreements is characterised by legal and bureaucratic language to the extent that people without legal training find it difficult to read and understand them. The judicial language is well known for the drafters of the agreement but not the parties. Thus, court-connected mediation seems to fail aspects of self-determination when it comes to drafting agreements. We draw on new-institutional theory when we explore and explain this apparent contradiction within the court-connected mediation practice.

Highlights

  • IntroductionWe aim to fill this gap by using 134 agreements reached in court-connected mediation as a basis of analysis

  • We present a content analysis from three different analytical perspectives: we analyse the content of the agreements, their level of creativity and the linguistic characteristics of the agreements

  • We have explored the content of mediated agreements, the creativity in the agreements, and, the language in which the agreements are written

Read more

Summary

Introduction

We aim to fill this gap by using 134 agreements reached in court-connected mediation as a basis of analysis. The purpose of our analysis is to examine whether agreements reached in court-connected mediation reflect party self-determination. The core idea of self-determination in a court-connected mediation setting is seeing the parties as the central actors. They make decisions about how to proceed as opposed to litigation where the lawyers act on behalf of the parties and the process is determined by procedural rules. The parties can bring other issues than those of the court case to the table—legal as well as non-legal They are not bound by the law in their dispute resolution and can fit their agreements to their particular circumstances.

Objectives
Methods
Findings
Conclusion
Full Text
Paper version not known

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.