Respected dispute resolution scholar and pioneer Carrie Menkel-Meadow recently posed an important question for our field in her essay “Why Hasn’t the World Gotten to Yes? An Appreciation and Some Reflections” (downloadable in PDF).

In it Professor Menkel-Meadow pauses to consider the enduring legacy of Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, Roger Fisher and William Ury’s influential work which laid out a common-sense approach for effective negotiation that stresses satisfaction of interests, mutual gains, joint problem-solving, and the use of objective criteria to create fair deals.

The full title of the book should be noted: “Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In” (emphasis mine). In other words, this book does not stand for weak-willed capitulation. On the contrary. Principled negotiation is designed to prevent the exploitation of one side by the other. It encourages negotiators to keep their eyes wide open–to be trustworthy but not trusting–and prepares them to bargain from a position of strength.

Yet this model for negotiation remains widely misunderstood and even maligned, especially here in the U.S., where we are fond of asserting that “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” and the word “collaboration” evokes not teamwork but the Vichy regime.

Consider for example what conservative commentator Michelle Malkin had to say a couple of years ago about peer mediation:

The left-wing Kumbaya crowd is quietly grooming a generation of pushovers in the public schools. At a time of war, when young Americans should be educated about this nation’s resilience and steely resolve, educators are indoctrinating students with saccharine-sticky lessons on “non-violent conflict resolution” and “promoting constructive dialogues.”

As irrational as these objections may sound to those of us who work in the dispute resolution field, we dismiss them at our peril. They are widely held.

To understand these objections more fully, listen to a story that aired this weekend on National Public Radio, “Peace Proposal Rattles Small Town“. It describes the hell that broke loose when a women’s club in a small Minnesota city persuaded the city council to pass a resolution endorsing a proposed congressional bill that would create a United States Department of Peace and promote the use of conflict resolution and negotiation. Public condemnation of the city council vote came swiftly, and, in the face of mounting opposition, the city council rescinded the resolution following a heated public hearing.

So why the objections? Quite a few viewed the bill (which many had apparently never bothered to read) as an attack on U.S. sovereignty, believing it would place the United States under the full control of the United Nations. Some condemned the Department of Peace as an instrument of communism. Others claimed that a Department of Peace would signal to our enemies that Americans are weaklings afraid to fight–”wusses” in the word of one citizen interviewed by the NPR reporter.

Peace, in other words, is for sissies.

That is the challenge that our profession faces. Until we can persuade the skeptics that principled negotiation and conflict resolution are smart, tough, strategic choices, we’ll never get the world–or at least our neighbors right here at home–to yes.

The Fifth International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution will be held in Liverpool, England, April 19-20, 2007. According to its web site,

This meeting builds on prior meetings in Geneva (2001 and 2002), held under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Council for Europe (UNECE), in Melbourne (2004) under the auspices of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, and in Cairo in 2006 in collaboration with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and the Cairo Regional Centre for International Commercial Arbitration. Online dispute resolution is becoming a priority of governments desiring to promote ecommerce, economic growth and technological development. Online dispute resolution is necessary not only to resolve disputes that arise but to build trust in systems and reduce risk for persons and groups interested in investment and participation in online and cross-border activities. The Liverpool ODR Forum aims at providing an overview of the diverse ODR techniques, the prospects of ODR, as well as exploring and analyzing the necessity for developing and promoting ODR.

Graham Ross of TheClaimRoom.com, a chief organizer of this event, tells me that this two-day forum will include significant coverage of the use of technology in mediation.

Keynote speakers are Sir Brian Neill, Kt, PC, QC, former Lord Justice of Appeal and past President of the Civil Mediation Council, and Professor Richard Susskind, IT Advisor to the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. Other participants include ODR notables such as Colin Rule, Ethan Katsh, and Sanjana Hattotuwo.

Registration, incidentally, is free. For further information on this Forum, please contact Graham Ross or Ethan Katsh.

101 must be a lucky number for bloggers today.

My friend Diana Skaggs, author of Divorce Law Journal, hosts Blawg Review #101, as I mentioned earlier this morning.

And the World Directory of ADR Blogs added its 101st entry, Schau’s Mediation Insights. This blog, launched just last month, is published by Jan Frankel Schau, a mediator in southern California who comes to the practice of mediation following two decades of experience as a litigator. Jan, who serves as President of the Southern California Mediation Association, will use her blog to muse and reflect on the opportunities and challenges of private mediation in the Los Angeles area. Best of luck to Jan in both her mediation practice and in blogging.

If you wish to add your blog or someone else’s to the Directory, please let me know. It’s a commercial-free site, and there is no cost to be listed. The Directory has information on submitting your blog and submission guidelines.

Diana Skaggs, the author of the excellent Divorce Law Journal, hosts Blawg Review #101. Diana, who lives, works, and blogs in the Bluegrass State, brings horse sense–and her usual smart, creative style–to this Derby-themed edition of Blawg Review, the weekly review of the best in law blogging hosted each week at a different legal blog. (As if that weren’t enough incentive, I hear that mint juleps will be served all week.)

Congratulations to Diana on a thoroughbred presentation of Blawg Review.