ADR and Some Thoughts on 'The Social' in Contemporary Legal Thought

Abstract

This chapter describes ADR as a paradigmatic form of contemporary legal thought and suggests that its vision of localized collaborative problem-solving points towards a reconstructed idea of “the social.” This collaborative or relational social strives to collapse what are often considered oppositional logics such as economic exchange and social connection: social relations are put into the service of economic exchange and economic exchange is configured as social relations. This contemporary social, the chapter argues, is politically open-ended and increasingly embedded in the law and economics of today.

Keywords: Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), the social, collaborative problem-solving, Duncan Kennedy, rights critique