Colin Rule's Blog
Colin Rule, the editor of this blog, is Director of Online Dispute Resolution for eBay and PayPal. He has worked in the dispute resolution field for more than a decade as a mediator, trainer, and consultant. He is currently Co-Chair of the Online Dispute Resolution Committee of the American Bar Association’s Dispute Resolution Section, and a Fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School.
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Recent Articles
Novojustice
Just a quick note to say I've started a new blog as preparation for a book I'm doing for the ABA in 2012 -- so most of my blogging energy has shifted over there. Please come by and check it out: http://www.novojustice.com
Technology and Divorce Mediation
I met with my good friend John Ford last week for lunch, and he introduced me to his business partner David Stein. The two of them have set up a new dispute resolution service provider focused on family disputes: Liaise Divorce Solutions. It's been almost a decade since the US figured out that...
UNCITRAL ODR Working Group Meeting In Progress
The first meeting of the UNCITRAL ODR Working Group kicked off today at the UN Center in Vienna. The full agenda for the 5 day meeting is here, and the Secretariat Note is available here. From the Note: "Research and experimentation with ODR indicate that the availability of dispute resolution...
The 2011 ODR Working Group Meeting - Chennai, India February 7-9
Chennai, India will serve as the host city for the 10th Annual International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution February 7-9, 2011. This conference will bring together the world's leading practitioners, academics, theorists, and online negotiation application developers, to share information, and...
Building a Global ODR System for Consumer Disputes
The ODR and Consumers 2010 Forum was held in Vancouver on November 2 and 3, 2010. The Forum (ODRAC) was convened in response to recent proposals advanced by delegations to the United Nations (UNCITRAL) and the Organization of American States. These proposals have begun to outline model rules for a...
Not a mythological character
Tina Dupuy: "The fact is: Obama is a good president. He’s a centrist who is somewhere between what mouth-foamers on either extreme say about him. He does listen to all viewpoints, which makes people of some viewpoints – ironically – dislike him. He’s not the villain the insane Right says he is, nor...
A nation of know-nothings
Tim Egan on the NYT website: "It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy... At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier. It’s one thing...
Obama on covert manipulation of public opinion
"They don't want you to know which interests are paying for the ads. The only people who don't want to disclose the truth are those with something to hide." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjssObygXaQ&
He still hasn't walked on water
Eugene Robinson's piece in the Washington Post today (plus Todd Purdum's recent VF piece) got me thinking. Is it impossible for any modern President to be seen as successful? Is the ire-generation engine so efficient now that every achievement comes with instant scorn included in the same...
A strange aversion to confrontational politics
John Judis in The New Republic: "Why has the White House failed to convince the public that it is fighting effectively on its behalf? The principal culprit is clearly Barack Obama. He has a strange aversion to confrontational politics... He was not a typical blue-collar, bread-and-butter Chicago...

