The intersection of crim law and dispute resolution

Michael O’Hear and Andrea Schneider have posted on SSRN this short and interesting piece entitled “Dispute Resolution in Criminal Law.” Here is the abstract:

Although the study of plea bargaining would seem, by its nature, to invite interdisciplinary collaboration between criminal law and dispute resolution scholars, there has been remarkably little cross-fertilization between the fields.  In this Essay, we discuss the suitability of conceptualizing plea bargaining as a form of dispute resolution and describe some of the useful things that criminal law scholars might learn from dispute resolution scholars, and vice versa. The Essay, which introduces a symposium issue of the Marquette Law Review devoted to plea bargaining, also briefly previews the other papers included in the symposium.

UPDATE:  A helpful reader sent me a note detailing that others are working on the crim/ADR connection:

You may be interested to know that the winning entry in this year’s ABA Section of Dispute Resolution essay contest for law students also focused on applying ADR to criminal cases; specifically, the article encourages adaptation of victim-offender mediation to the cases of those who have been exonerated after wrongful convictions.  The article addresses, among other things, the anger that victims continue to feel toward those convicted of the crimes against them, even when the evidence of innocence is substantial, and suggests mediation as a tool to heal the anger for both victims and the wrongfully convicted.

Here is the link to the Section of Dispute Resolution website, which has a link to the winning entry.