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2009 Recognition Night

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	About the Honoree Lela P. Love Network for Peace through Dialogue was proud to honor Lela Porter Love at our Recognition Night on November 3, 2009. A professor of law and director of the Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (NYC), she founded (in 1985) and directs Cardozo's Mediation Clinic, which trains future lawyers in the art and science of mediation.

Mediation brings disputing parties together to talk about perspectives on their conflict, in order to enhance their understanding, promote problem-solving, and often achieve agreement and closure. Although today mediation training is firmly recognized as part of the law school curriculum, at the time she developed the mediation clinic at Cardozo it was considered a radical innovation.

Love serves as mediator, arbitrator and dispute resolution consultant in community, employment, family, human rights, school-based and commercial cases. She has trained thousands of mediators in the United States and abroad. Her course in Budapest, Hungary, offered each summer for the past decade—Mediation and Other Methods to Foster Democratic Dialogue—targets both American law students wanting to learn about mediation and scholars and professionals in the dispute resolution field from around the world desiring to learn better ways to teach and promote peaceful resolution of conflict.

Glen Cove Mediation

Her successful mediation of a rancorous dispute in Glen Cove, NY, in the early 1990s between immigrant workers, some of them Salvadoran refugees, and outraged residents of Glen Cove, brought national attention to the use of mediation in resolving complex litigation. It is still widely discussed because the case demonstrated that even where there are constitutional issues in play (here freedom of speech and assembly) mediation can achieve many things that litigation cannot.

After a two-day mediation, with the days spaced a week apart, the parties reached consensus on many measures that addressed the situation. Moreover, respectful dialogue begun in the mediation continued afterward, making it possible to work out new problems as they developed. Many of the commitments made as a result of the mediation called on the town and representatives of the workers to collaborate to ensure the peaceful and constructive implementation of their agreement.

The case resonated across the country because of tensions in many towns between immigrant workers and long-time citizens. As such cultural clashes continue to take place today, Love’s work in Glen Cove and elsewhere holds out hope that dialogue and mediation can set up processes for addressing complex issues of public policy that respect the essential humanity of all the parties.

Mediation in Everyday Life

Love is the author of three law school textbooks on mediation and negotiation. Her latest book, The Middle Voice: Mediating Conflict Successfully, co-authored with Joseph Stulberg, brings techniques of mediation into everyday life. Everyone from the parent confronted with a dispute between children over a TV program to policy-makers can benefit from this very accessible but thorough discussion of when and how to conduct a mediation.

Dialogue and mediation are inextricably intertwined in both their purposes and their techniques. We are proud to give our award this year to one of the pioneers in the mediation field, Lela P. Love.

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Last updated April 26, 2012

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