Members of the panel (in order of appearance):

Ethan Katsh (NCTDR)

Daniel Rainey (HSI & NMB)

Jeffrey Aresty (IBO)

Beth Trent (CPR)

Darin Thompson (British Columbia Ministry of Justice)

The session in which I was involved at the “Symposium on ADR and the Courts” focused on the proposition that the traditional justice system, the complex of courthouses and venues that define the traditional system, have been stressed to the limit, and in fact are failing to address pressures being brought by contemporary society.

Some of the pressures are easy to understand – court budgets are being slashed, and the consensus is that the “lost” money is never coming back. The reaction of the justice system to this type of pressure is to try as best it can to prop up the current system, even at the expense of systems that take other pressures off the courts. For example, the California courts, faced with deep budget cuts, eliminated the state’s ADR programs, thereby erasing programs that took the pressure from court dockets. Not, in my opinion, a smart move. And certainly not one designed to face the future with creative and long lasting solutions to deep problems.

Jeff Aresty, who was my partner in the discussion, has been an advocate of creating private justice systems that can address the deficiencies of the traditional system – an article that Jeff, James Cormie, and I wrote on the state of state courts was distributed as part of the panel. A copy can be accessed by clicking here: State Courts and the Transformation to Virtual Courts (in the current issue of the ABA Litigation Journal).

A copy of my short speaker’s notes can be found by clicking here:  People, Places, and Paper