Pedagogies in the Meantime: Reflections on ADR and Restorative Justice in U.S. and Canadian Legal Education

Abstract

In a moment when restorative justice stands poised to mainstream in U.S. and Canadian legal education, this essay recalls some intellectual history of ADR as a comparative tale. We argue that ADR’s eventual embrace of a single state legal system greatly facilitated its uptake as a field in legal education. By contrast, our research suggests that restorative justice teachers are more capaciously asking how people’s efforts to imaginatively reconfigure conflict practices can open plural pathways to legal experimentation and social change. To that end, we observe what we are calling two “pedagogies in the meantime” that characterize this experimental work: comparison and prefiguration. We conclude by briefly reflecting on what these pedagogies could mean for restorative justice as a field in legal education.

Keywords: Legal pluralism;, Prefigurative legality, ADR, Restorative Justice, Circle Practice, Mainstreaming