JUSTICE IN MEDIATION
March 12, 2004

The Dialectic of Justice in Mediation
"Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies?"

Professor Ellen A. Waldman
Thomas Jefferson School of Law

The modern mediation movement, birthed during the unruly 1960’s, rejected the primacy of legal norms redolent of government authority, in favor of an intimate process in which individuals could define for themselves what justice demanded and provided. The article traces the Justice dialectic from the field’s founding up until the present, examining competing perspectives such as Facilitative versus Evaluative and Self-Determination versus Social Norms. Part Two uncovers the assumptions about individual communications and social institutions that inspire the competing Justice narratives, and Part Three discusses how these competing narratives vie for implementation in credentialing and qualification schemes throughout the country.

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