Jurix 2007 Tutorial on Developing Fair Negotiation Systems


One of the barriers to the uptake of online dispute resolution relates to user concerns about the fairness and consistency of outcomes achieved by this approach. However, development of this area offers considerable benefits to society and individuals. The development of fair' and just' negotiation support systems and online dispute resolution environments will lead to an increasing confidence in the use of e-commerce. Just models of bargaining and negotiation and the Online Dispute Resolution systems will also assist the legal system to provide principled and consistent outcomes. It will also enhance access to justice for the users of the systems we will develop. This will meet the rising trend of pro se representation.
This tutorial will address issues of encouraging confidence in the dispute resolution assistance provided by online systems. It will assist lawyers, legal academics and business practitioners to better utilise and trust the internet. This research will develop measures for assessing the outcomes of online of sentencing, plea-bargaining, and family mediation. Such measures will form the basis of a new model for evaluating fairness and consistency within online dispute resolution systems. The model will inform the construction of fairer and more consistent systems of IT-based negotiation support in the future. Through a study of negotiation and mediation principles, negotiation knowledge management, artificial intelligence, and an examination of specific negotiation support systems (in family law, body corporate disputes, insurance claims) this tutorial will provide attendees with the requisite background knowledge for developing just' negotiation support systems.
Objectives
  • To examine how to cope with the rapidly escalating number of disputes: both offline and on the internet.
  • To introduce dispute resolution fundamentals.
  • To develop notions of fairness in mediation and negotiation.
  • To indicate how information technology (in particular argumentation, artificial intelligence and game theory) can provide decision support for resolving disputes.
  • To develop just and usable negotiation support systems.
About John Zeleznikow
Professor John Zeleznikow is a full professor of Information systems at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia and is currently a visiting fellow at the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
He has conducted research and taught in Australia, France, Israel, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, and USA. He has written two books (for Kluwer and Springer) on Information Technology and Law a further book with Arno Lodder, will be published by Cambridge University Press), supervised seventeen PHD students and three postdoctoral fellows, received over E 5 million in research grants and published over 190 refereed articles. His major research interests are in managing negotiation knowledge, legal decision support, and argumentation. Professor Zeleznikow was the general chairman of both the sixth and ninth International Conferences on Artificial Intelligence and Law. He currently leads a team researching issues of fairness and justice for constructing negotiation support systems.
Professor Zeleznikow's Family_Winner system recently won an ABC TV (Australia) award on the New Inventors show. In 2005-6, his research was featured in the Economist, Boston Globe, Times of London, and BBC radio as well as numerous Australian TV, radio, and newspaper outlets. In 2005, Dr. Lodder and Professor Zeleznikow published a landmark paper, "Developing an Online Dispute Resolution Environment: Dialogue Tools and Negotiation Systems in a Three Step Model", The Harvard Negotiation Law Review. Vol. 10:287-338. In March 2007, Professor Zeleznikow gave a series of lectures and workshops on using Information Technology to enhance access to justice, at the invitation of the New Zealand Ministry of Justice.
Registration
You can register for the tutorial in combination with the Jurix conference, or as a separate event. In both cases, please make an account on http://jurix2007.cli.vu, en register for the event. If you need any help, please contact info@jurix2007.org.