First Page
170
Last Page
194
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Following the growth of online mediation during the COVID-19 pandemic, practitioners and ADR scholars sought to delineate the virtues and shortcomings of the online process. Many report satisfaction with online mediation. Still, critics find the process devoid of emotional experience or otherwise “dehumanizing.” As ADR practitioners contrast online and face-to-face experiences, and recommend a forum to disputing parties, they should acknowledge that online platforms can never replicate physical encounters between embodied persons. This Article draws on the work of 20th century philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists to explore mediation as corporeal encounter between embodied subjects. Online mediation, by constraining the involvement of human bodies, diminishes capacities for empathy, emotional experience, and moral agency.
Recommended Citation
Rob McNiff,
Being There: Perils of Disembodied Mediation,
25 Pepp. Disp. Resol. L.J.
170
(2025)
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/drlj/vol25/iss2/2
