Susan Daicoff

Editor's Note: David Wexler is Professor of Law and Director, International Network on Therapeutic Jurisprudence,University of Puerto Rico and a Distinguished Research Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology, University of Arizona. With Bruce Winick, he is the co-founder of the movement of therapeutic jurisprudence. Since we haven't caught up with David to interview him, he has graciously allowed us to reprint a recent law review article. .

It begins below but is attached in PDF form in its entirety so that formatting such as footnotes will be preserved.

Introduction

At the University of Puerto Rico School of Law (UPR) in the fall term of the 2008-2009 academic year, I offered, for the first time, a sentencing and corrections seminar—approached, of course, with a distinctly therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) spin. During that term, I was also asked to review a manuscript prepared by Florida Coastal School of Law student Dax Miller. Dax Miller’s paper, prepared for Professor Susan Daicoff’s Comprehensive Law course and published in The Florida Coastal Law Review,[1] did not relate to sentencing and corrections. Rather, it critiqued, from a TJ perspective, the standard Florida divorce agreement form.[2] Moreover, Dax Miller proposed a rewritten form, one highly consistent with TJ principles.[3] At just the time that I read Dax Miller’s paper I came across, in my assigned sentencing casebook, the federal pretrial diversion form,4 and concluded that it too was in desperate need of Daxing. Suddenly, it occurred to me that Dax Miller had opened up a completely new potential branch of TJ scholarship—what might be called Form Reform.

“What would your mother say?”

A Mediator/Educator’s Perspective

Which values and skill sets will best serve us as mediators and perhaps more generally as lawyers? Where do we learn them?

As long as there have been disputes, there have been methods of resolving them. From today's perspective, the adversarial legal system was a big improvement upon the armed combat and duels that preceded it and it has endured for centuries as the preferred method of resolving disputes institutionally. Argument, analysis, precedents, and drawing fine distinctions helped the law evolve to a finely edged sword.

The Florida Dispute Resolution Center is taking workshop proposals for their 2009 conference. The conference is in August in Orlando, FL and is aimed mostly at mediators (although the mediators are often lawyers, arbitrators, mental health professionals, etc. as well).

Here is the page with more info on the conference http://www.flcourts.org/gen_public/adr/ourconf.shtml.

The attached pdf is the proposal form for anyone who is interested. (A pdf version for those with special needs is also available).

This is our 18th annual conference and there is generally a turn-out of about a thousand attendees. Multiple workshops are held simultaneously so attendance at each workshop will vary.

Elizabeth Roach encourages any of you with ideas to share to submit a proposal. Susan Daicoff and Elizabeth held a workshop last year and likely will again this year.

Final submission date on the form is Feb. 20 but contact Elizabeth if you want an extension. Her work email is roache [at] flcourts [dot] org and is the best way to reach her regarding the conference.