A few days ago I had the opportunity to sit down with Jamie Horsley, Deputy Director of the China Law Center at the Yale Law School, Shi-Chi Pan, a Yale Law student, and Zhao Wenmei, a visiting scholar from China to share some thoughts and experience about mediation in the U.S. Ms. Zhao, one of four visiting scholars at the China Law Center for the fall semester, has served as a judge and an administrative judge in China and is currently the principal staff member of the Administrative Reconsideration Department of the Legislative Affairs Office of Shanghai Municipal People’s Government.
During her stay at Yale Law School, Ms. Zhao is studying the dispute resolution frameworks for the use of mediation that have been created by various federal and state agencies, including the United States Postal Service REDRESS mediation program. Although most U.S. mediation programs, both in and out of the administrative setting, use the facilitative model of mediation, the REDRESS mediation program is unusual in its commitment to the use of transformative mediation.
Ms. Zhao expects her research about mediation processes in the U.S. to help her upon her return to Shanghai to draft proposed guiding practices and procedures for a more structured use of mediation in the administrative adjudication process.
