Online Dispute Resolution: The Emperor's New Clothes?

The question this paper addresses is how can information technology support the resolution of disputes through arbitration and mediation. The first and second parts will examine the benefits of online dispute resolution, some of the pitfalls it may present and how these can be avoided. The third part will then look at one of the more formidable obstacles--the issue of security of communications. The fourth part will examine the use of ODR in one particular sector, the traditional arbitral institutions. Much has been written about the application of ODR in areas other than commercial arbitration, such as consumer e-commerce and domain name disputes, where its use has been on the whole successful. Arbitration, being a fact-finding and decision-making process, seems ideally suited to IT. It is therefore interesting to see to what extent ODR is used in practice. The conclusion from this examination is that, although some IT is being used and increasingly so, this is still a developing field. This paper will conclude by discussing the reasons for this relatively slow take-up of ODR in the field of commercial arbitration and by speculating about future developments in this area.