Politics of the Judiciary - A Poor Judgment on Mediation

1. The Law is a vital, living institution that is essential to regulate citizens’ disputes.
2. The law is a self-serving club, reactionary and sometimes disingenuous.

Discuss.

It is with a weary pen that I scribe a response to Michael Cook’s note¹ of last week. It was, it appeared to me, a limp swipe at all that has happened over the last decade to make the dispute world more acceptable. Perhaps he was writing to a brief: it was for,I believe, the Law Society Conference.

Mediation is bad and the judges are waking up to it

It is a calamity that we no longer have 120,000 cases jamming the doors in the Strand.

In an attempt to exercise my Mediator instinct, I looked for common ground with the former judge. Well, I can agree with him that only some cases are suitable for mediation – and that compulsory mediation, if not a contradiction, is at least a severe distortion.