Seeking Consensus in a Polarized World: The Role of Dispute Resolution and Deliberative Democracy
Channel: UCI Open
Date: 26/07/2012

Chancellor's Chair Lecture: "Seeking Consensus in a Polarized World: The Role of Dispute Resolution and Deliberative Democracy," delivered by Professor Carrie Menkel-Meadow on March 1, 2011.

As we observe increased polarization in the American polity and unproductive adversarial and contested behavior in the legal profession, media, education, and cultural production generally (with an overly simplistic "debate" mode of argument), scholarship from law and elsewhere (empirical, normative and prescriptive) suggests that there might be better ways for human beings to behave to solve human, social, and legal problems.

Professor Menkel-Meadow, one of the founders of the dispute resolution field, will explore recent knowledge, insights and concerns that illuminate how dispute resolution theories and practices might inform our efforts at democratic deliberation, both nationally and internationally. Among many examples, this lecture will explore what went wrong when some of these methods were "scaled up" in the debates about health care policy, as well as what can go "right" with different forms of process.

Chancellor's Chairs are endowed positions awarded to a very small number of UCI professors across the campus who demonstrate unusual academic merit.