Your post is highly pertinent to the link and the tension between the fair application of the rule of law — which best operates by stripping the messy particulars of each person’s separate ‘story’ of injustice to address a systemic and generalized one — and the shift toward the mediation of these disputes — which puts the people and their individual problems back into the mix.

As I’m sure you’re aware, Laura Nader and others believe mediation — a one-on-one highly personal and intensely emotional process — is undermining the gains made in the justice system in the last 30 years.

One of my wishes for 2008 is that we we re-open a high-level conversation among lawyers and scholars on this topic. I’m also hoping for a “best practices” blog for my practice — mediation.

Thanks again for joining the blogosphere on a topic critical to the future of our justice system and, more casually, for joining in the meme tag game.

Happy New Year!!

Vickie