John Barkai

Lower Criminal Courts: The Perils of Procedure

The lower criminal courts in this country have failed to create even the illusion of fairness. Despite over half a century of criticism and proposals, remarkably little in the way of their day-to-day operation has changed. This article reviews the ebb and flow of lower criminal court reform sentiment, looks at the dichotomy between judicial theory and practice in these courts by focusing on the right to counsel issues from a “ground-floor” level, and critiques a movement to reform these courts by applying alternative dispute methods such as the “Cheyenne Way” or “popular tribunals” such as are used in Cuba.

Pushing the Limits on Court-Annexed Arbitration: The Hawaii Experience

This is the third of a series of four articles describing the evaluation results for Hawaii’s mandatory Court-Annexed Arbitration Program (CAAP), a program with a

Using Court-Annexed Arbitration to Reduce Litigant Costs and to Increase the Pace of Litigation

150,000 jurisdictional limit. The article reports on survey data from over 600 returned surveys from lawyers in CAAP cases. The evaluation was focused on the litigation costs, pace of litigation and satisfaction of the participants because these factors reflect the goals of CAAP. The survey results might be very useful for other states considering using an arbitration program with a high jurisdictional limit. The article reports on lawyers’ opinions about pretrial discovery reduction, discovery costs, the pace of litigation, satisfaction with the program, arbitrator workload, arbitrator fairness, case value and complexity, and looks at differences in lawyers’ opinions depending upon whether the lawyers used contingency or hourly fees. Because most court-annexed arbitration program have much lower jurisdictional limits, the article also examines the survey results by case value – looking responses for cases valued up to

Cultural Dimension Interests, the Dance of Negotiation, and Weather Forecasting: A Perspective on Cross-Cultural Negotiation and Dispute Resolution

15,000, from

Teaching Negotiation and ADR: The Savvy Samurai Meets the Devil

15,001 to

What Happens When Mediation is Institutionalized

50,000, and at

The Impact of Discovery Limitations on Pace, Cost and Satisfaction in Court Annexed Arbitration

50,001 and above.