a judge and jury. Conciliation, a less common form of ADR, involves submission of the dispute to a neutral third party for her investigation and recommendation. With mediation the parties try to negotiate a resolution with the assistance and guidance of a neutral mediator. Today many contracts include a clause that requires parties to use ADR to resolve their disagreements. Whether or not they have a contract, many parties voluntarily pursue ADR before going to court. State courts increasingly require parties in certain types of cases to try arbitration or mediation before proceeding to trial. The American Arbitration Association and other organizations support these efforts by designing ADR systems and procedures. Types of Law In the United States, where most courts hear cases concerning all areas of law, categorizing the laws is largely arbitrary. In An Introduction to the Legal System of the United States, Professor E. Allan Farnsworth suggested a useful distinction between public and private law. Public law generally concerns disputes between the government and individuals. Private law concerns disputes between private individuals. Types of Law: Public Law Public law, as described by Professor Farnsworth, includes constitutional, criminal, trade regulation, labor, and tax law. Constitutional law is embodied in the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court that interpret the federal Constitution. Many of these cases concern whether conduct by the legislative or executive branches of the federal government violate constitutional definitions or limitations on their powers. Under the "political question" doctrine, however, the Supreme Court will decline to decide such a case if the Constitution reserves the issue for the legislative or executive branch without judicial interference. A large majority of constitutional law cases concern the protection of individual rights from unlawful federal conduct. The Bill of Rights, which comprises the first ten amendments to the Constitution, is the primary source of these rights. For example, the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, while the Fourth Amendment protects the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. The Constitution also protects individual rights from unlawful state conduct. The most important source of this protection is the Fourteenth Amendment, which contains the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. By interpretation of these clauses, the U.S. Supreme Court has applied the rights and protections found in the Bill of Rights to state conduct. Criminal law mostly appears in state penal codes. These codes, while largely based on the common law of England, reflect an effort to arrive at uniform, reliable definitions of crimes. The codes define everything from felonies, such as murder and rape, to misdemeanors and petty offenses. There also are federal sources of criminal law, most notably relating to interstate conduct, such as drug trafficking and fraudulent use of the mails. Another important source of federal criminal law is the statute that protects civil rights, such as the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of race, color, or creed. Criminal law cases also can involve issues of constitutional law, such as the rights of the accused to remain silent and to be represented by an