Just Curious

Procedural courses and ADR

It was strange, but in my last exam I did better in my civil procedure final than contracts or torts. Which was amazing, since I thought I was better at doing theory than practice...and would thus have done better in torts :)

In a sense this makes sense. I've always wanted to practice alternative dispute resolution some day and being good at procedural matters would certainly not hurt. After some thoughts and meditation I have become more strongly convinced that there ought to be better ways out for people than to litigate all their monies away or to kill each other. Even after reading the pro-litigation articles by people like Owen Fiss I'm still not convinced that there is any threat to due process ADR poses that is not an evil already intrinsic in traditional judicial process.

Aside from introductory ADR and arbitration, I might also do some advanced procedural courses. Stephen Burbank, a leading procedural scholar from Penn, is offering international civil litigation for next winter, and I think I might take that. He seems to be a very inspiring teacher, and he certainly was a funny, talkative sorta' guy during our faculty-student lunch.

posted by James Chang @ 3:42 PM