/// Ethan Katsh Wins the 2017 D’Alemberte-Raven Award from the ABA

Ethan Katsh Wins the 2017 D’Alemberte-Raven Award from the ABA

Ethan Katsh wins the 2017 D’Alemberte-Raven Award from the ABA for his outstanding contribution to ODR. Professor Katsh is widely recognized as the father of Online Dispute Resolution and was the one proposing the term “forth party” as a metaphor for the use of technology in dispute resolution. ODReurope, the online section of ADR point is particularly proud to have Ethan Katsh as a member of its advisory board.

The full text of the announcement…   

The ABA Section of Dispute Resolution has selected Ethan Katsh, Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as the recipient of the 2017 D’Alemberte-Raven Award. Professor Katsh is widely recognized as the founder of the field of online dispute resolution (ODR). Along with Janet Rifkin, he conducted the eBay Pilot Project in 1999 that led to eBay’s current system that handles over sixty million disputes each year. With Professor Rifkin, he wrote Online Dispute Resolution: Resolving Conflicts in Cyberspace (2001), the first book about ODR. Since then, he has published numerous articles about ODR and co-edited Online Dispute Resolution: Theory and Practice, which received the International Institute for Conflict Resolution book award for 2012. His book, Digital Justice: Technology and the Internet of Disputes, co-authored with Orna Rabinovich-Einy, will be published by Oxford University Press on March 14, 2015

Professor Katsh is a graduate of the Yale Law School and was one of the first legal scholars to recognize the impact new information technologies would have on law. In The Electronic Media and the Transformation of Law (Oxford University Press, 1989) and Law in a Digital World (Oxford University Press, 1995, he predicted many of the changes that were to come to law and the legal profession. Professor Katsh has served as principal online dispute resolution consultant for the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), a federal agency mandated to provide mediation in Freedom of Information Act disputes. During 2010-2011, he was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Haifa. In 2014-2015, In 2014-2015, he was an affiliate researcher at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society

Professor Katsh was principal dispute resolution advisor to SquareTrade.com and is Chairman of the Board of Advisors of Modria.com. His principal current research concern involves issues related to health care and, more particularly, to disputes over electronic health records. In 1997, with support from the Hewlett Foundation, he and Professor Rifkin founded the National Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution at the University of Massachusetts. Professor Katsh has been co-principal investigator in several National Science Foundation funded projects, most notably “The Fourth Party: Improving Computer-Mediated Deliberation through Cognitive, Social and Emotional Support.” The frequently mentioned metaphor of technology as a “Fourth Party” was first proposed in Katsh and Rifkin’s Online Dispute Resolution (2001).

The D’Alemberte Raven Award recognizes leaders in the dispute resolution community for their significant contributions to the field. The award is named for the late Robert D. Raven of San Francisco and Talbot D’Alemberte of Tallahassee, former ABA presidents and pioneers with the ABA in the area of dispute resolution.

The award will be presented to Professor Katsh at the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution at the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution Awards reception on Friday, April 21st, in conjunction with the Section of Dispute Resolution Spring Conference.