Mediation Ethics: Cases and Commentaries

In her intriguing book, Mediation Ethics: Cases and Commentaries, Professor Ellen Waldman offers the mediation profession an opportunity to explore ethical conundrums in a most innovative and instructive way. Drawing on the problem-based approach to ethics native to other professions, she sets forth numerous ethical challenges that illuminate the grey areas often confronted by mediators. Professor Waldman deftly identifies those dilemmas that elude easy answers and her problem method encourages the reader to move beyond an articulation of mere rules to a more profound comprehension of the real difficulties inherent in practice.

Professor Waldman's problem-based method offers a special bonus; many of the "commentators" are experts in their own right who bring long years of study, scholarship, and practice to their discussions. Mediation Ethics makes clear that even "experts" differ as to the 'correct' way to proceed and that what practicing mediators require most when confronting ethics puzzlers is nuanced judgment and a clear understanding of what is at stake. Mediation Ethics takes us a long way toward this sort of judgment and understanding and should be required reading for practitioners, academics, and trainers alike.
—Kimberlee K. Kovach is the Director for The Frank Evans Center for Dispute Resolution and serves as the Distinguished Lecturer in Dispute Resolution at South Texas College of Law

Ellen Waldman’s Mediation Ethics is a brilliant tapestry. With sophistication and clarity, it details, analyzes and embroiders a series of case studies using rules, mediation models, and the insights of many leading mediators and commentators. A wonderful synthesis of the theoretical and practical, it should be required reading for anyone who mediates or who uses, teaches, regulates, or studies mediation.
—Leonard L. Riskin, Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law