Conflict Prevention and Resolution
Full course description
This is a 14-week course divided into three sections all revolving around the topic of conflict prevention & resolution:
- Weeks 1-5: Theories behind conflict prevention & resolution;
- Weeks 6-9: Mechanisms for conflict resolution; and
- Weeks 10-14: Legal challenge (aka “the moot court”).
We hope to present you with ideas and theories about how conflicts form and how we can make (practical) changes to mitigate their negative impacts. In doing so, we want to encourage our students to reframe conflicts as potential opportunities for learning and growth. We will take a very holistic approach to achieve this goal by collecting insights from fields diverse as psychology, neuroscience, behavioral economics, anthropology, sociology and more.
The course will not only help you build a foundational understanding of conflict prevention and resolution but will provide ample opportunities for you to practice (or wrestle with) the theories during our tutorials.
Teaching methods
- For better or worse, we are NOT permitted to have lectures for this course; however, if there is enough demand from the students, we will create videos and offer office hours in lieu of lectures.
- We are scheduled for 3-hour tutorials each week for 14 weeks, which sound a bit brutal, but each tutorial will consist of active challenges/tasks (in the hopes of not boring you half to death).
- Your homework each week will be to:
- prepare for these tasks before the tutorials; and
- conduct a bit of post-mortem/reflection about the exercise for your PebblePad Portfolio after the tutorial.
- The aim of our course is NOT to cram as much knowledge as possible in the limited amount of time that we have. We want you to – if at all possible – have fun while learning and feel inspired to learn something new. In other words, we want you to be intrinsically motivated. How we can best do that is something we will figure out together in this course.
Assessment methods
For better or for worse, this course is graded on a pass/fail scale. The three “graded” assignments are in Weeks 5, 9 and 14 (at the end of each section).
- Week 5: Creating Your Conflict Prevention & Resolution Tool Kit;
- Week 9: Analyzing Your Preferred Method of Conflict Resolution; and
- Week 14: Moot Court Memorandum & Oral Pleading.
Specific instructions about the moot court and the memorandum & oral pleading assignment will follow in Week 10. As for the other two assignments, think of it as a paper/essay (in the range of 1,500-2,000 words), where you will have to think about what you’ve learned in the previous weeks and assess how that content will (or will not) help you as you progress in your career.
Attendance is strongly encouraged (as there will be a series of group exercises during the tutorials that you will have to reflect upon for the weekly homework). In exchange for your commitment to attend the tutorials, we will do our utmost to make it worth your while. To facilitate this goal, we will set up an “online suggestion and feedback box” that will be running before and during the course so that we can incorporate your inputs on a rolling basis.
For those of you that managed to read all of the above, we leave you with an easter egg: A clearly upset daughter says to her dad, “Dad! Are you even listening to me?!” to which the dad responds, “Well, that’s an interesting way to start a conversation.” It’s a dad joke about (not) listening. You’re welcome.
Course objectives
At its core, this course aims to help students become better problem-solvers. During the first part of the course, we will attempt to (re)discover: 1) what it is that we want for ourselves, 2) how we can resolve our differences with others, and 3) how we can engage or galvanize the community around us in furtherance of our shared goals. We attempt to do so by developing a growth mindset, learning how to tell our unique stories (while taking perspective of others), and much more.
To validate this approach, I borrow the hallowed words of Bill Ury, the co-founder of the Harvard Program on Negotiation: “If we can figure out how to unlock all three kinds of potential together – the potential that lies within the parties, the potential that lies between the parties, and the potential that lies around them – I believe that will give us our best chance for dealing with the intractable conflicts that we face.”
In the second part of the course, we will cover the basics of negotiation, mediation, and arbitration and discuss how the selection of the conflict resolution mechanism and various procedural considerations can impact the substantive outcome of the conflict. The third and final part of the course will be the moot court, where students get to try their hands in litigating a conflict. While the course will generally encourage students to avoid litigation to the extent possible, we will nevertheless cover the basics of drafting an effective legal memorandum and pleading in a convincing manner relying on knowledge we acquired in the first two sections of the course.
Prerequisites
No prerequisites, but given that this is a compulsory 2nd Year Course for our European Law School, the assumption is that you’ve passed the necessary courses leading up to this course.
Recommended prior knowledge
No prior knowledge required. Just come in with an open mind and be prepared to get comfortable with discomfort (whatever that means).
Recommended reading
William Ury, Getting to Yes