ADR and non adversarial justice as sites for understanding emotion in dispute resolution: Reporting on research into teaching practices in selected Australian law schools

The importance of understanding emotion in dispute resolution is increasingly being recognised in the literature refecting upon current legal practices and legal education. Recently, the Australian academic Michael King pointed to the rise of 'emotionally intelligent justice' and the implications for legal practice and legal education. The contiguous fields of alternative or appropriate dispute resolution (ADR) and non-adversarial justice may provide fruitful avenues for bringing emotion into the legal curriculum. In this article, the authors bring together research exploring the teaching of ADR in selected Australian law schools with a consideration of their own teaching practices in the field of ADR and non-adversarial justice. The authors report upon the research findings and explore the questions of how the discipline areas of ADR and non-adversarial justice are presently and could increasingly be used by Australian law schools to teach about emotion in dispute resolution.