Mediation Ethics

Book excerpt: Mediation Ethics is a groundbreaking text that offers conflict resolution professionals a much-needed resource for traversing the often disorienting landscape of ethical decision making. Edited by mediation expert Ellen Waldman, the book is filled with illustrative case studies and authoritative commentaries by mediation specialists that offer insight for handling ethical challenges with clarity and deliberateness. Waldman begins with an introductory discussion on mediation's underlying values, its regulatory codes, and emerging models of practice. Subsequent chapters treat ethical dilemmas known to vex even the most experienced practitioner: power imbalance, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, attorney misconduct, cross-cultural conflict, and more. In each chapter, Waldman analyzes the competing values at stake and introduces a challenging case, which is followed by commentaries by leading mediation scholars who discuss how they would handle the case and why. Waldman concludes each chapter with a synthesis that interprets the commentators' points of agreement and explains how different operating premises lead to different visions of what an ethical mediator should do in a given case setting. Evaluative, facilitative, narrative, and transformative mediators are all represented. Together, the commentaries showcase the vast diversity that characterizes the field today and reveal the link between mediator philosophy, method, and process of ethical deliberation. Commentaries by Harold Abramson Phyllis Bernard John Bickerman Melissa Brodrick Dorothy J. Della Noce Dan Dozier Bill Eddy Susan Nauss Exon Gregory Firestone Dwight Golann Art Hinshaw Jeremy Lack Carol B. Liebman Lela P. Love Julie Macfarlane Carrie Menkel-Meadow Bruce E. Meyerson Michael Moffitt Forrest S. Mosten Jacqueline Nolan-Haley Bruce Pardy Charles Pou Mary Radford R. Wayne Thorpe John Winslade Roger Wolf Susan M. Yates