"Can Mediation Evolve into a Global Profession?"

The Operations Director of the International Mediation Institute e-mailed me an article with the above title. Irena Vanenkova writes:

I would like to offer you the article  Can Mediation Evolve into a Global Profession? by Michael McIlwrath, Senior Counsel-Litigation, GE Oil & Gas, Florence, Italy and Chairman of the Board of IMI, where he presents the perspective of a leading corporate user of mediation services on the vital issue of evolving Mediation into a Global Profession for the future growth of mediation.

Excerpt from the article:

[M]ethods of dispute resolution ... over time adapt to changes in their surrounding environments.  In fact, I recently had the privilege of interviewing cultural anthropologist Robert Carniero, curator of South American ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who explained his experiences living for periods with different tribes in the Amazon basin, and their approaches to dispute resolution.   As Dr. Carniero explains it, primitive and rather brutal forms of dispute resolution – such as beating each other with heavy wooden clubs – works just fine when the groups consist of no more than 50 or 100 people and those not content with the outcome can just move away. 

Things get more complicated, however, as societies grow in size and complexity, and so far all large societies have evolved within them formal justice systems.  In fact, it appears that societies cannot

grow larger in size and complexity without first having evolved a system of resolving disputes that can keep the peace between the citizenry and ensure that markets efficiently function.

Which leads naturally to consider the future of private dispute resolution in a global, interconnected marketplace, and in particular the potential for mediation as an enabler for more efficient global commercial activities.  Today, mediation is an organism that thrives in particular niche ecosystems like the UK, Australia, and North America.  The question is whether it can thrive in other locations, and whether it can be used to resolve cross-border disputes.  Anyone who has experienced mediation will understand its potential to grow and flourish as a critical part of a globally inter-connected economy, but it would be folly to ignore the challenges in breaking out of a local niche practice. 

Origin of the Mediation Species

Although mediation traces its origin to the great cultures of Confucian Asia, the Mid-East and Africa, the modern notion was born when US Chief Justice Warren Burger invited Harvard Professor Frank Sander to present a paper at the Roscoe Pound Conference of 1976, a historic gathering of legal scholars and jurists brought together to address dissatisfaction with the American legal system. Prof. Sander’s paper Perspectives on Justice in the Future provoked a radical change in thinking.  As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor explained:

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