Transformative Mediation in Labor and Employment
My Google Alert on Transformative Mediation called my attention to the Labor & Employment Law Interest Section Blog (http://lel-is.lerablog.org/2009/03/recent-lel-articles-january-2009/) and a listing of recent articles, in particular this article:
Arby Aiwazian, Note: Transformative Mediation: Empowering the Oppressed Voices of a Multicultural City to Foster Strong Democracy, 11 Scholar 31 (2008)
I Googled the author and discovered he is a third year student at Southwestern Law School and found this:
Excerpt from September 2008 Southwestern Reporter
http://www.swlaw.edu/news/southwesternreporter/sept08
"W.A.Y." - Who Are You & Why Are You here?
This month - Arby Aiwazian, Third-year Day Program
Aiwazian also knows how to make the most of opportunities. As a member of the Law Review, he fulfilled his writing requirement by authoring a Note titled, "Transformative Mediation: Empowering the Oppressed Voices of a Multicultural City to Foster Strong Democracy," which will be published in a forthcoming edition (Volume 11) of The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Minority Issues, a leading minority issues law publication. To write the Note, he drew on his past experience as an intern for the Western Justice Center Foundation, where he assisted with the training of Pasadena police and school administrators in cross-cultural dispute resolution through the Community Nonviolence Resource Center.
"In my Note, I wanted to discuss the way that lawyers can make the idea of a more participatory democracy a reality," he said. "Transformative mediation allows disputants to take a hands-on role in managing conflicts. Mediation nowadays is a growing field but the most prevalent style, evaluative mediation, doesn't take under consideration the underlying emotions and reasons that people take on lawsuits. The successful application of transformative mediation techniques in legal and business settings ought to spur its more widespread use. Ultimately, transformative mediation promotes democratic empowerment by embracing the constitutive values of participatory democracy."