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The Role of Court-Connected Mediation and Judicial Settlement Efforts in the Preparatory Stage

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Abstract

This chapter examines the role of court-connected mediation and judicial settlement efforts in the preparatory proceedings of civil court cases across four Scandinavian and eight former socialist countries. The two processes are defined and compared demonstrating fundamental differences between them. Most importantly, judicial settlement efforts are part of litigation and rules of procedure apply, whereas court-connected mediation takes place outside litigation within a different conceptual framework. The use of judicial settlement efforts varies across the countries and seems to be underused by some. The national rules regarding civil procedure usually contain provisions stating a duty to try and settle by way of judicial settlement efforts but are silent regarding to how this should be done. Mediation is a recent addition to civil justice and seven of the countries have implemented this service as court-connected mediation schemes. Studies suggest that court-connected mediation often saves money and time and many users find mediation processes and outcomes satisfactory. On the other hand, there are anti-competition concerns as well as concern regarding the negative effects of the privatisation of justice. Court-connected mediation is used significantly more in some of the countries than in others but only little in most, pointing to a potential for increase in the use of this alternative to litigation. The chapter concludes by asking whether court-connected mediation is a sign of a new legal culture and by highlighting a need for expanding our understanding of what promotes and inhibits settlement efforts in contemporary justice.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Center for Dispute Settlement and Institute of Judicial Administration (1992).

  2. 2.

    The European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (2014), p. 542.

  3. 3.

    Hopt and Steffek (2013), p. 20.

  4. 4.

    See for example Kovach and Love (1998), Riskin (2003–2004) and Vindeløv (2012), p. 213 ff.

  5. 5.

    See for example Adrian (2012), 106 ff. and Welsh (2001), Kovach (2004) and Nolan-Haley (2005).

  6. 6.

    For the term facilitative (as opposed to evaluative), see Riskin (1996). Also, see more on this in Sect. 9.5.

  7. 7.

    Coined this way by Nylund in Sect. 1.5.

  8. 8.

    Ibid.

  9. 9.

    For a similar distinction between mediation and case settlement, see Mironi (2014). Another way of understanding the differences is seeing judicial settlement efforts and court-connected mediation as belonging to different paradigms of dispute resolution, see Vindeløv (2012).

  10. 10.

    See e.g. Kovach (2004) and Vindeløv (2012).

  11. 11.

    Lov om mekling og rettergang i civile tvister (Dispute Act). The 1915 Act was called Lov om rettergangsmåten for tvistemål (Civil Procedure Act).

  12. 12.

    See the introduction to the 10. juli 1795 Fr. om Forligelses-Commissioners Stiftelse overalt i Danmark, samt i Købstæderne i Norge.

  13. 13.

    For a more detailed account on the history of the conciliation boards in English, see Adrian (2014), p. 158 ff. and in Danish see Vindeløv (1997).

  14. 14.

    For the history of judicial settlement efforts in Norway and the current many forms of settlement activities, see Bernt (2011) and Nylund (2014).

  15. 15.

    Adrian et al. (2015).

  16. 16.

    This estimate is based on information from the contributors of this volume supplemented with statistics and is on file with the author. Sweden seems to have a much higher rate of first instance settlement, see Lindell (2012), p. 303, but since the information is from 1986 and may have changed considerably since then, it is not included her.

  17. 17.

    In connection with the implementation of the EU-directive the government rejected a proposal tying mediation more closely to the court, see Sippel (2014), p. 187 f.

  18. 18.

    Theoretically, mediation can take place in the Supreme Court, too, but this option is hardly relevant as the Supreme Court hears cases of general public importance.

  19. 19.

    Directive 2008/52/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 May 2008 on certain aspects of Mediation in civil and commercial matters.

  20. 20.

    In, for instance, the Czech Republic, Estonia and Latvia the promotion of other forms of mediation than court-connected mediation were driven by implementation of the EU directive. For an overview of the implementation of the directive see De Palo and Trevor (2012).

  21. 21.

    See Watson (1995) for more on legal transplants.

  22. 22.

    E-mail from Camilla Bernt 15 january 2014, on file with the author.

  23. 23.

    Adrian and Vindeløv (2014).

  24. 24.

    Legge 9 agosto 2013, n. 98.

  25. 25.

    Section 8-4 (1) of the Norwegian Dispute Act and Evarsti (2011), p. 126.

  26. 26.

    https://www.domstol.dk/saadangoerdu/retsmaegling/Pages/Etiskeretningslinjerforretsmaegling.aspx - accessed on the 17th of September 2015.

  27. 27.

    For the terms facilitative and evaluative/directive, see Riskin (1996, 2003–2004).

  28. 28.

    Kovach and Love (1998) and Adrian (2012), p. 413.

  29. 29.

    De Palo and Trevor (2012), p. 322.

  30. 30.

    Ibid.

  31. 31.

    OECD (2013), p. 211.

  32. 32.

    In Europe, se for example Knoff (2001), Roepstorff and Kyvsgaard (2005), Pel and Combrink (2011), Directorate General for Internal Policies (2011) and the Danish Courts website http://www.domstol.dk/om/publikationer/HtmlPublikationer/Handlingsplaner/Danmarks%20Domstoles%20handlingsplan%202015/kap04.htm - accessed on the 17th of September 2015. For an account of a number of studies in primarily North America see Mediate BC Dispute Resolution and Design (2014) and Department of Justice, Canada (2007) (there is a slight overlap in the studies reported in the two studies). Cf. Wissler (2004) who in a review of a number of American and Canadian studies got inconclusive results with regard to cost of court-connected mediation for parties compared to litigation. Some studies found that money was saved compared to litigation and others not.

  33. 33.

    Pel and Combrink (2011), pp. 51–52. A similar pattern is found in a Danish study, see Roepstorff and Kyvsgaard (2005), p. 85. The Dutch data does not include the cost of maintaining the referral service in the courts. When adding up all the cost and savings, the study shows that the referral service is almost cost-efficient and it is expected to be entirely cost-efficient with an expected increase in referrals, see p. 52.

  34. 34.

    Knoff (2001), p. 80.

  35. 35.

    Directorate General for Internal Policies (2011), p. 4.

  36. 36.

    This corresponds quite well with the findings in a number of American studies where the settlement rate in most instances was between 27–63 %, se Wissler (2004), p. 65. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to account for these differences.

  37. 37.

    Knoff (2001), p. 80, and Mediate BC Dispute Resolution and Design (2014), p. 1.

  38. 38.

    See, for example, Knoff (2001), Wissler (2004), Roepstorff and Kyvsgaard (2005) and Department of Justice, Canada (2007).

  39. 39.

    See for example Wall and Dunne (2012).

  40. 40.

    Department of Justice, Canada (2007).

  41. 41.

    Hollander‐Blumoff and Tyler (2011), p. 5.

  42. 42.

    Hollander‐Blumoff and Tyler (2011), pp. 5–6.

  43. 43.

    Ury et al. (1988), Vindeløv (2012).

  44. 44.

    Adrian and Mykland (2014). The article contains a review of other studies of creativity in mediation.

  45. 45.

    See for example Farrow (2014). For an interesting account of the discussion among Swedish scholars with very different views on the place for mediation in the courts, see Dahlqvist (2014), p. 149 ff.

  46. 46.

    Galanter (2004) has suggested this may be one explanation for the decline in the number of trials in the US.

  47. 47.

    There is no statistical information is available for Hungary – the last of the countries in this volume with court-connected mediation.

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  1. Law Faculty, University of Copenhagen, Studiestraede 6, 1455, Copenhagen K, Denmark

    Lin Adrian

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  1. School of Law,Psychology and Social Work, University of Örebro, Örebro, Sweden

    Laura Ervo

  2. Faculty of Law, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway

    Anna Nylund

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Adrian, L. (2016). The Role of Court-Connected Mediation and Judicial Settlement Efforts in the Preparatory Stage. In: Ervo, L., Nylund, A. (eds) Current Trends in Preparatory Proceedings . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29325-7_9

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