MEDIATION between Saudi Arabia and The U.S - Thesis Example

With a shift in public policies, increasing numbers of corporates and legal firms are using alternative dispute resolution or ADR processes for conflict resolution. This paper explores mediation, which is a type of alternative dispute resolution process, where a third member or party, known as the mediator, helps the disputing parties to reach a settlement. It will also study the mediation processes followed in the US and Saudi Arabia, while also taking into consideration the mediation methods not adopted by these two countries.

Alternative dispute resolution or ADR (also referred to external dispute resolution in countries, as Australia)1 is a process other than litigation or adjudication in court, in which there is the presence of a neutral third party who helps to resolve conflicts or disputes.2 The process includes conflict resolution procedures and mechanisms, which allows the conflicting parties to reach an agreement that would not result in litigation. ADR is actually an umbrella term for different ways in which the conflicting parties can work out a resolution, with or even without the presence and assistance of a third party.

Despite a general perspective that ADR processes are capable of elevating the outcome quality and the degree of justice achieved in a conflict situation, ADR has faced a great deal of resistance in the past. As experts claimed, “for decades different forms of dispute resolution (ADR) have been proposed, developed, critiqued, modified, renamed, redefined and slowly brought within the usually suspicious, and sometimes hostile, edifice of state-based normative ordering. Some see this as…democratic storming of the Kafkaesque citadel of the law…[While] others see it as a dangerous dilution or even undermining of justice.

”3 Despite the initial resistance, ADR has currently gained global popularity and acceptance amongst the common people and those in the law