Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)
Today the United States is a "sue happy" country. Over the last fifty years the crime rate has gone up. According to NationMaster.com, United Stated rank first in total crime with 23,677,800 which is much more than the second place Germany with 6,264,720. Total crime in this only includes rapes, murders, assaults, car theft. This information comes from the Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends which covers 1988 to 2000.
We have been introduced to a lot of new crimes that has arisen from the constant advancement in technology and more. There are a lot of white collar crimes. "The Supreme Court's caseload has grown substantially over time. John Marshall's first term as chief justice, the Court delivered only 15 opinions; in 1853 that number rose to 46, a pitiful handful by today's standards. By 1853, the number of cases docketed had risen to 253, still small compared to the current docket of more than 7,500. So too workload of lower federal courts have grown. In the 1820s, about 3500 cases were pending in the nation's circuit and district courts. In 1997 alone, litigants filed more than 270,000 cases in the U.S. district court and more than 50,000 in court of appeals."(Murphy 88)
With all these cases filed and all these cases that are appealed, there are not enough judges or courts for that matter, to handles all these cases. This is why the we have come up with Alternative Dispute Resolutions(ADR). ADR first came about 1960s. Alternative Dispute Resolution simply refers to any way to solve a legal problem without having to go to court. Alternative Dispute Resolutions(ADR) doesn't just deal with minor cases.. Even the Federal government have come up with Alternative Dispute Resolutions(ADR) Working Group which is a branch of the Office of Disputes Resolution at the U.S. Justice Department. Congress and the President established the Working Group to coordinate, promote, and facilitate the effective use of ADR in the government, pursuant to the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act of 1996. (Cinciotta)
The Administrative Dispute Resolution Act (ADRA) of 1996 requires federal agencies to have policies that address the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) techniques and to appoint a Dispute Resolution Specialist. For the purpose of the statute, "alternative means of dispute resolution" include conciliation, mediation, facilitation, fact-finding, minitrials and the use of "ombuds." (Administrative Dispute Resolution Act of 1996.)
There are many different kinds of Alternative Dispute Resolutions.
It is more difficult for governments to provide adequate salaries to public defense lawyers and the result is that these lawyers are often more inexperienced (Fairfax, 2013). Since the amount of defendants who are unable to afford private counsel has increased, public defense lawyers are also overworked. It is not uncommon for public defense lawyers to juggle hundreds of cases simultaneously (Fairfax, 2013). In other words, the system is unable to handle the volume and has therefore resorted to avoiding the trial process whenever
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and traditional litigation are different types of ways to resolve legal matters. Traditional litigation can prove very costly and often times drawn out for lengthy periods. ADR affords companies the opportunity to resolve a legal matter in a reasonable amount of time and at times without the exorbitant cost of a trail. The case detailed in this paper is Kovalchick v. South Baldwin Hospital, which used traditional litigation, but reversed on appeal the hospital may want to examine the benefits of ADR.
Our forefathers were bright enough to establish a system of government with a series of checks and balances to maintain a balanced government. For the past decade a series of checks and balances has begun to fail our government. In our failing system of government inmates have taken advantage of the court system and have flooded it with an inconceivable number of frivolous lawsuits. Laurel Walters, a writer for the Christian Science Monitor, investigated inmates' lawsuits and found that these "recreational litigators...are suing the courts as an intramural sports activity." Action needs to be taken in order to rectify and protect "US" from this squandering of our tax payer provided funds and resources. Today in a world when knowledge is power, I'm ready to hand other tax payers an entire empire.
"Anybody living in the United States in the early 1990s and paying even a whisper of attention to the nightly news or a daily paper could be forgiven for having been scared out of his skin... The culprit was crime. It had been rising relentlessly - a graph plotting the crime rate in any American city over recent decades looked like a ski slope in profile... Death by gunfire, intentional and otherwise, had become commonplace, So too had carjacking and crack dealing, robbery, and rape. Violent crime was a gruesome and constant companion...
There was a decline in crime during the 1990s. Our country enjoyed seven years of declining crime for the period 1991-98, the most recent data available. During this period crime declined by 22% and violent crime by 25%. These are welcome developments, particularly following the surge of crime and violence of the late 1980s. This decline occurred during a time when the national prison population has increased substantially, rising from 789,60 in 1991 to 1,252,830, a 59% rise in just seven years and a 47% increase in the rate of incarceration, taking into account changes in the national population (Mauer 21-24).
people in these 21st century society wonder, “When is Justice to be done?” For district attorneys,
66. Americans rank crime among the nations greatest problems. Crime can touch people of all lifestyles, race, and ethnicity. Public polls further illustrate that people in America remain fearful of crime without realizing that serious crime has declined since the record-setting years of the early 1980’s. However, many people still believe that crime rates are rising in United States. The news media and politicians help to keep the public’s attention focused on crime. This attention also keeps people fearful of crime in America. FBI data further supports that there is no national crime wave to fear. Most people will not experience crime directly but instead learn about it indirectly. Researchers believe that conversations with friends may help to magnify the amount of local violence. Fear of crime forces many Americans to “stay of the streets” and away from dangerous areas.
Americans file about 15 million lawsuits a year. (Cannell) A fourth of all lawsuits filed are either frivolous or fraudulent. Perhaps, the careless point of view about the seriousness of lawsuits is perpetuated by the false representation on the many law shows on TV, such as Ally McBeal and Law and Order, in which the case is neatly rapped up in an hour. In reality most court cases take about 19 months from start to finish.
Crime in this country is an everyday thing. Some people believe that crime is unnecessary. That people do it out of ignorance and that it really can be prevented. Honestly, since we live in a country where there is poverty, people living in the streets, or with people barely getting by, there will always be crime. Whether the crime is robbing food, money, or even hurting the people you love, your family. You will soon read about how being a criminal starts or even stops, where it begins, with whom it begins with and why crime seems to be the only way out sometimes for the poor.
(violent crimes include the following: murder, manslaughter, rape, and robbery). Since 1995 the overall crime rate for people under 17 has dropped by 39 percent. In ...
Have you ever heard the saying, “Crime doesn’t pay,” or “If you do the crime, you do the time?” Merriam- Webster defines crime as an action or omission that constitutes an offense that may be prosecuted by state and is punishable law. There is a lot of crime being committed each year not only in America, but worldwide. Although people only look at what is happening here in America, the crime rate in some countries surpasses the ones here in America. There are over 2,000 crimes recorded per 100,000 populations in the United Kingdom (UK), making it the most violent place in Europe. Committing a crime nowadays for any person(s) is almost common and crime does not discriminate whether you are here in America or abroad. In the film “In Cold
Crime is an extremely prominent part of American society. Recorded activity within the US saw 10,329,135 (1,246,248 violent crimes and 9,082,887 property crimes) crimes perpetrated with 62.5% of all violent crimes pertained to aggravated assault and 68.2% of all property crimes were considered larceny-theft in 2010. (FBI.2011) Despite the large number of crimes the United States also has the largest number of incarcerated citizens per capita in the world with nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners coming from the United States’ 5% of the world population. This is due to much harder punishments in the US than those that are given a shorter longer period of incarceration or merely fined in other countries.(Liptak 2008) Due to the prevalence of crime in the US, economists have used models to explain the behavior and ramifications of government actions and the motivations behind crime and its effect on society that psychologists and sociologists are usually unable to address.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Alternative Dispute Resolution. Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) involves dispute resolution processes and techniques that fall outside of the government judicial process. There has been moves against ADR in the past by entities of many political parties and their associates, despite this, ADR has gained inclusive acceptance among both the broad community and the legal profession in past years. In fact, many courts now entail parties to remedy to ADR of some type, usually mediation, before allowing the parties' cases to be tried. The increasing attractiveness of ADR can be clarified by the increasing caseload of traditional courts, the perception that ADR imposes fewer costs than litigation, a preference for confidentiality, and the desire of some parties to obtain larger control over the selection of the individual or individuals who will decide their dispute.
The U.S. Department of Labor (2011) reported the national average of unemployment for 2008 was 5.8 percent. The rate dramatically increased in 2009 with an average of 9.3 percent and 9.6 percent for 2010. While unemployment rates have increased, the FBI’s preliminary reports for 2010 show that law enforcement agencies across the U.S. have reported a decrease of 6.2 percent in the number of violent crimes for the first 6 months of 2010 when compared to figures reported for the same time in 2009. The violent crime category includes rape, murder, robbery, and aggravated result. The number of property crimes also decreased 2.8 percent when compared to the same time last year. Property crimes include burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. Arson decreased 14.6 percent when compared to the same time periods of 2009 (FBI, 2011).