Georgetown University Law Center Scholarship @ GEORGETOWN LAW 2013 Regulation of Dispute Resolution in the United States of America: From the Formal to the Informal to the ‘Semi-formal’ Carrie Menkel-Meadow Georgetown University Law Center,
[email protected] This paper can be downloaded free of charge from: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/1291 http://ssrn.com/abstract=2337199 Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Regulation of Dispute Resolution in the United States of America: From the Formal to the Informal to the ‘Semi-formal’ in REGULATING DISPUTE RESOLUTION: ADR AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE AT THE CROSSROADS: (Felix Steffek, Hannes Unberath, Hazel Genn, Reinhard Greger & Carrie Menkel-Meadow, eds., Oxford, U.K.: Hart 2013) This open-access article is brought to you by the Georgetown Law Library. Posted with permission of the author. Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub Part of the Civil Procedure Commons, Conflict of Laws Commons, and the Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Commons Regulation of Dispute Resolution in the United States of America Carrie Menkel-Meadow 15 Regulation of Dispute Resolution in the United States of America: From the Formal to the Informal to the ‘Semi-formal’ CARRIE MENKEL-MEADOW I. Introduction: History and Characteristics of Dispute Resolution in the US: Formalism, Informalism and ‘Semi-formalism’ with and without Regulation II. The Characteristics of ‘Formal’ Justice III. Informal Justice in the US IV. ‘Semi-formal’ Justice in the US V. What Little We Know about Dispute Resolution Use and Regulation VI. Assessing Justice in Plural Procedural Practices I. INTRODUCTION: HISTORY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF DISPUTE RESOLUTION IN THE US: FORMALISM, INFORMALISM AND ‘SEMI-FORMALISM’ WITH AND WITHOUT REGULATION HE STORY OF ADR in the US is one of ‘co-optation’ of what was to be a serious challenge to formalistic and legalistic approaches to legal and social problem solving and is now highly institutionalised by its more formal use T 1 in courts.