Chapter 19 - The New World of Online Dispute Resolution (OJDR)

Summary

Introduction to the Technology

Decades ago, the internet “started the fire” of online dispute resolution (ODR) and the COVID-19 crisis poured gas on it (American Arbitration Association 2003). The expan¬sion of communication provided by the internet has created more disputes, while offering unexplored ways of resolving them. Though ODR has been criticized as a distortion of traditional face-to-face encounters, it has become widely popular in the last thirty years not as an alternative to in-person dispute resolution, but as the default setting.

Online judicial dispute resolution (OJDR) offers a blend of dispute resolution and digital justice. ODR consists of the application of information and communications technology to prevention, management and resolution of disputes. Digital justice requires an understanding of the role of law, legal processes and institutional design. New arrangements in each of these areas have enabled individuals to resolve and prevent disputes using digital technology. ODR and digital justice have a lot in common, but one difference is that ODR is commonly extended to private providers, while digital justice is offered only by judicial authorities or public officials entrusted by the law.

The growth of technology over just the last few decades is remarkable. In the words of Richard Susskind:

[s]ince [the 1980s] there have been breathtaking advances in video and related technologies. While the most sophisticated systems, such as immersive telepresence, create a remarkable sense of being gathered together (…) even more modest systems, running as basic apps on laptops and handhelds (for example, Skype and FaceTime) enable a very high level of interaction. Systems that, technologically speaking, sit between telepresence and mobile phone video–telephony, are widely installed in courts across the world (Susskind 2019).

Susskind felt the newer technology plus never-ending human desire to resolve legal battles via ADR would lead us to a point where parties will design their own dispute resolution systems. At least this was the aim of the ODR pioneers (Susskind 2019). But are we there yet? And, if so, how did we get to the point where ODR has become one of the main options for disputing parties?

An International History and Comparisons of Models

The first example of ODR was in 1982 at Carnegie Mellon University when faculty were informed through a digital message board that an oil spill had occurred (Katsh and Rabinovich-Einy 2017).