Abstract

This volume provides a contemporary and comprehensive critical analysis of the role and function of mediation within modern civil justice systems and its wider impact on access to justice, with a combined focus on how increasing digitisation of civil justice processes presents both challenges and opportunities for mediation’s formal inclusion. It brings together leading international scholars in the field of civil dispute resolution from a number of common and civil law jurisdictions, applying a range of methodologies to produce a variety of different perspectives on key issues such as whether mediation should form such an important part of the justice systems, whether litigants should be compelled to engage with mediation, what impact mediation has on litigants’ perceptions of justice, the role of mediators,  the role of mediation within an increasingly digitized civil justice system, whether mediation should be regulated, the impact of the Singapore Mediation Convention on the practice and mediation and the role of national courts, the impact of the EU Mediation Directive, and whether it is appropriate for policy makers and the courts to promote mediation over other forms of dispute resolution.