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| navigate: home: magazine: spring 2001: article | |
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Dickinson School of Law establishes Center for Dispute Resolution By Laura J. Bernhard | ||||||
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The Dickinson School of Law of The Pennsylvania State University has established a Center for Dispute Resolution, an interdisciplinary program that is serving as a resource for law practitioners and the community. The center combines the Law School’s current offerings in the areas of dispute resolution with the outreach efforts of the Law School and Penn State. The center will serve as an outlet for published scholarship and will contribute to public policy discourse. The Dickinson School of Law has a lengthy tradition in the areas of mediation and dispute resolution. According to Robert M. Ackerman, director of the Center for Dispute Resolution, The Dickinson School of Law started teaching courses in advocacy about 30 years ago and added courses in negotiation and mediation in the early 1980s. By 1983, The Dickinson School of Law had become the first in the United States to offer a law school-based mediation program, and in the mid-1980s began to provide consulting and training on the implementation of dispute resolution processes. The concept of the integrative Center for Dispute Resolution emerged in 1999 and was formalized late last year. The center now serves as an umbrella organization, pulling together existing entities and programs. Other law schools have dispute resolution centers, Ackerman said, but “certain aspects distinguish ours.” With Nancy A. Welsh, associate director of the center, Ackerman plans to feature a fully “integrative approach” and will “work to integrate the center’s efforts with others in the University community.” The Center for Dispute Resolution plans to continue existing partnerships and develop new partnerships with Law School and Penn State units, including with the Agricultural Law Research and Education Center and the Miller Center for Public Interest Advocacy at The Dickinson School of Law and with the Center for Research in Conflict and Negotiation, directed by Dr. Barbara Gray, professor of management and organization in The Mary Jean and Frank P. Smeal College of Business Administration. “The center helps direct attention to the fact that we have expertise in the area of dispute resolution at The Dickinson School of Law and Penn State,” Ackerman said. “It provides a means of focusing our efforts, not just on teaching, but also on thinking how we can serve the community.” The Center for Dispute Resolution will hold annual symposia and will bring together scholars of national and regional renown. Additionally, the center is working to establish a certificate program in dispute resolution for students enrolled at The Dickinson School of Law. Ackerman said, “The center enables us to model what we teach by the manner in which we operate: an emphasis on collaboration and employment of an array of dispute resolution techniques. No one technique for resolving disputes can be viewed as a cure-all. We help people put theory into practice.” On the continuum of dispute resolution techniques, the primary methods include negotiation, mediation, arbitration and courtroom litigation. As one advances from the first to last of these techniques, a neutral party plays a greater role in resolving the dispute, he explained. Ackerman joined The Dickinson School of Law faculty in 1980. He left the Law School in 1996 to serve as the dean of the Willamette University School of Law in Salem, Ore., and returned to The Dickinson School of Law in 1999. He previously served as co-director of the Law School’s Mediation Center, as a mediation consultant to the U.S. District Court and as the first director of the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Lawyer Dispute Resolution Program. He is a graduate of Colgate University and Harvard Law School. “The practice of mediation and dispute resolution has received strong support from the federal and state courts and will be used more and more in the practice of law in the future,” Nancy Jean LaMont, director of the Office of Continuing Education and Outreach at The Dickinson School of Law, said. The center also will “serve as a major resource for practitioners and others.” The Center for Dispute Resolution’s outreach programs will include a series of continuing legal education programs and other initiatives. In May, the center will offer a three-day Mediation Skills Workshop for continuing legal education credit. In June, the center will hold a four-day skills workshop for educators in conjunction with the Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit. This workshop, Conflict Resolution for School Superintendents and Administrators, will provide hands-on training in the area of dispute resolution and is eligible for Act 48 credits. In September, the center, in conjunction with the Law School’s Agricultural Law Research and Education Center and Environmental Law Journal, will host its first two-day symposium: Resolving Public Policy Disputes Arising from Agriculture: Challenges Presented by Law, Science and Public Perception, or “Is That a Farm?” National scholars in the field of dispute resolution will gather to suggest alternatives to resolve agricultural disputes. The symposium will be held annually. Mediation Advocacy, the final program scheduled for 2001, will take place in December. “The Center for Dispute Resolution is exciting, because it is so interdisciplinary,” LaMont said. “We have a great potential to reach out beyond lawyers and judges to a lot of other groups who can benefit from the expertise of the center’s scholars.” The center’s first four outreach programs are intended for four separate audiences. “This is just the beginning,” she said. “We can only see it growing in the future.” | |||||
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