Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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My color choices are bold over neutral. I am not known for taking anything but strong positions on politics, economics, education, ethics, aesthetics, you name it. My political views are now so strongly formed and deeply felt that I avoid learning political affiliations of mediation parties or lawyers, or my students, to preserve my ability to serve as a neutral mediator or fair professor. I hereby confess that I reject editorial columnists’ scolding to respect the other side in political conversations, unless to gain insight and strategic advantage for their eventual persuasion.

My inner railings and outer rants about what is wrong-headed, immoral, cruel, unjust, ineffective, misdirected, and dishonest within our current political and economic realities prompt questions for me:

So, why am I a professional neutral? Why have I spent 30-plus years as a mediator and occasional arbitrator? When I mediate, I lack ultimate power to effectuate an outcome I believe to be right. Even in arbitration, I am constrained. I cannot jettison lawful contracts, even if they seem usurious to me. What are the consequences of putting one’s professional energies into a profession that aims at settlement, instead of advocacy?