Transcript of Remarks by Sandra Day O'Connor , Associate Justice, Supreme Court of
the United States, on the Occasion of the Dedication Ceremony for the Friends Building
of the Western Justice Center Foundation, February 8, 1999.

Transcript of Remarks by
Sandra Day O'Connor
Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States

On the Occasion of the Dedication Ceremony
for the Friends Building of the
Western Justice Center Foundation

Made at the Ambassador Auditorium
in Pasadena, California
on February 8, 1999

The original Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals court building was in San Francisco. The Court
of Appeals judges from Southern California had chambers in a court building in downtown
Los Angeles. In 1986 the Government dedicated the old Vista del Arroyo Hotel here in
Pasadena to a federal Court of Appeals building for Southern California. Along with the
hotel came the 12 vacation bungalows on the grounds of the old hotel. The Court of Appeals
judges who were to occupy the Pasadena Courthouse were concerned about the future
use of the bungalows. The bungalows were, after all, in their own yard or cartilage, so to
speak.

In a remarkable bit of community action and ingenuity in 1985, a group of judges and some
local lawyers decided to form the Western Justice Center Foundation and to use some of
the bungalows for related programs and activities. The original purpose of the Foundation was
to provide research on the uses of alternative dispute resolution methods, and to develop
strategies for improving the administration of justice. The founders envisioned a center
of scholarship and research on the peaceful resolution of disputes, and seminars and
conferences on innovative ways to improve our justice system.

The Foundation worked with the City of Pasadena to acquire four of the bungalows. The City
purchased them from the federal General Services Administration and then leased them to
the Foundation on a long-term basis.

In the years that followed, the Foundation raised the funds to renovate the Richard Keatinge
Building, which was dedicated in 1994 by my colleague, Justice Kennedy. In 1996 the
second building was restored and leased to the Pacific Oaks Research Center, an institution
doing research on early childhood education, conflict resolution and race-bias reduction. It
was dedicated by then Chief Justice Malcolm Lucas of the California Supreme Court. Today,
we celebrate the restoration of the third building, the Friends Building, with an initial grant from
the Irvine Foundation. There is one more building to be renovated -- the Maxwell House -- so
stay tuned for a fourth dedication ceremony a year or so down the road, as we say, in the
next Millennium.


Along with the renovation of the buildings, the Foundation itself was renovated in a sense.
It became more of a catalyst organization to bring together other organizations to focus on
particular projects. The result was development of a dispute resolution system for
intergovernmental conflicts in the Southern California region, and, also, a system for conflict
resolution in the public schools. It also developed an international consortium with the
African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes, which has provided some
assistance in South Africa.

The Foundation can point to some concrete accomplishments in programs as well as the
physical plant. Today 25 school systems are using, teaching, and applying the Foundation's
model curriculum on conflict resolution. The Race Unity and Diversity Consortium is
succeeding in replicating its Pasadena pilot project in cities and towns across the state. The
Ninth Circuit Appellate mediation evaluation project is now well in place. The South African
program has produced additional interactive programs in 20 locations in California.

The Friends Building which we dedicate today will house a regional division of the Casey
Foundation which is devoted to the development of ways to mentor, protect, and enhance
the lives of foster children, as well as housing other organizations concerned with childhood
development. It will also house FACS[the Foundation for American Communications], an
organization for education of the media about law, justice, and alternative dispute resolution.
The Casey Foundation Center is headed by Dr. Katherine Gabel, a remarkable and talented
woman whom I first knew in the early 1970s in Arizona, when she headed the first of that
State's juvenile prison facilities. She brings a lifetime of experience working with children to
her new work with the Casey Foundation.

Now all of this is a bit of background on why we are gathered here today. It also explains why
I am so pleased to be here. Although I am the Ninth Circuit Justice it is my first visit to the
Richard Chambers Courthouse and its neighboring bungalows.
A principal focus of the Western Justice Center Foundation is on nonjudicial dispute
resolution. In our country it is an important focus, indeed. Americans are the most litigious
people in the world today. Our judicial system has been too successful in some ways.

Within our communities, disputes between neighbors and citizens are common. Squabbles
between neighbors over yards, dogs, fences and boundaries have always existed. But in
the past few years, we have witnessed rioting in the streets of major cities, and frequent
breakdowns in the relationships between employers and their employees. We have been
made painfully aware of the violence within our schools by the ghastly school shootings
in Oregon and Arkansas. Even within churches, disputes have arisen between ministers
and congregations, retiring pastors and new pastors and members of a religious
institution's hierarchy. 1 I have even read a report of a conflict arising from a congregation's
accusation that its minister had an "unbending" biblical interpretation. 2 In short, conflict
can be found throughout our community, including those parts of our community -
families, schools and churches - that, for a long time, have functioned to resolve disputes,
not initiate them.

Pundits have suggested a number of theories to explain the growing number of conflicts
within our community, ranging from rapid industrialization and urbanization to a general
break down in societal mores. While it is important to identify the causes of conflict in our
society, regardless of the cause, we must find ways to mend the tears in our social fabric
arising from these disputes. In short, we must find ways to resolve more of the disputes
that permeate our society, and do so effectively and nonviolently.


Not all disputes are amenable to adjudication in court. With apologies to any plaintiffs'
lawyers present today, the courtroom may be a poor vehicle for resolving some disputes
because the adversarial process can work to increase tension between adversaries rather
than settle it. One reason is that a court must focus on the particular dispute before it and
not formulate long-term solutions to complex community problems. If there is no broader
approach to resolve these conflicts, even a local dispute can end in violence.

In the context of cases in the courts, alternatives to full adjudication are numerous and
accessible. For example, litigants have the option of seeking resolution through neutral
evaluation, negotiation, arbitration, mediation, or even summary jury trials. This range
of alternative dispute resolution options have benefited the legal system not only relieving
some congestion in the dockets of courts, but also by providing an effective, less costly,
and often more satisfying means to resolve the disputes.

Mediation has been successfully used internationally as well as within the United States.
American mediation not only helped to end the dispute between Chile and Peru over the
boundary cities of Arica and Tacna, but also brought about a truce between Israel and
Egypt in the 1970s. More recently, American negotiators brokered the Dayton agreement,
bringing some degree of peace to war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovnia. Historically, America's
failure to engage in mediation may have perpetuated some very famous conflicts in our own
country. During the War of 1812, for example, Czar Alexander I of Russia offered to mediate
the hostilities between the United States and Britain. The United States accepted the
offer, but Britain rejected it, and the war continued During the Civil war, both Britain and
France expressed a willingness to mediate the conflict between the North and South, but
President Lincoln rejected the offer.

There are approximately 200 community dispute resolutions centers established in the
United States. 3 In Dorchester, Massachusetts mediation has been employed, in lieu of
criminal prosecution, to settle criminal matters in cases where the victim and the defendant
know each other. Indeed, cities from Elkhart, Indiana to New York have established similar
community dispute resolution centers and bring together criminals and their victims to
mediate criminal violence. In the first North American mediation of this kind, a community
mediation program in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada brought together two young men, who
had vandalized property, and their 22 victims. The result was an agreed upon program of
restitution to the victims. 4

Varied forms of dispute resolution have also been employed to resolve family disputes.
California first offered court-connected mediation services in 1939, the focus of which was
to effect a reconciliation of the spouses. 5 The use of divorce mediation is now quite
common 6 , and several states allow for mediation of custody and visitation issues. 7 In
addition, in Cambridge, community panels have been used to mediate parent-child issues,
such as curfews and truancy problems. 8


The most innovative use of non-violent dispute resolution today, however, has been in our
schools. In the fall of 1996, the American Bar Association launched Project Out-reach to help
children manage conflict in schools, and as of January of this year, schools in 21 cities were
involved in the program. 9 Under this program, local lawyers trained in mediation techniques
establish school mediation programs to settle disputes between students, as well as
between students and teachers or administrators. In addition to outreach programs, peer
mediation programs have been established in nearly 10,000 schools nationwide. 10 These
programs involve mediation conducted by trained teens rather than community lawyers and
are informally structured, with simple rules such as no name-calling and no interrupting others.
Some of these programs emphasize Quaker principles of nonviolence, while others are
modeled after forms of alternative dispute resolution in the legal world.

The benefits of using mediation in the school setting are easily demonstrated by the numerous
stories of non-violent conflict resolution resulting from mediation. For example, in Long Island,
a 19-year-old boy from Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School, Witney Hubbard, grew up in a
strife-filled family where both parents used drugs. One morning when he was in the eighth
grade, in frustration, he struck several of his fellow students. He was suspended and
subsequently committed an assault. After spending two years in juvenile detention centers,
Witney finally returned to school. By this time, however, Roosevelt had introduced a mediation
service to resolve disputes, and Witney began using it, instead of violence, to resolve his
conflicts. He claims he has now learned to resolve problems rather than lash out in frustration,
and has even secured employment. 11

At Stamford High School in Connecticut, a young female gang member once struck a
pregnant classmate and was ordered to the school's peer mediation office. After mediating
the dispute between the two young women, the teacher in charge of the mediation program
trained the gang member to be a mediator, and now, she has quit the gang and is a well-
regarded peer mediator, keeping herself and others out of trouble. 12

It seems only appropriate that the most innovative forms of nonviolent conflict resolution are
found in our schools, for who better than our young people to learn non-violent problem
solving skills? After children learn to defuse conflicts between each other through non-violent
means, they can utilize these skills to defuse conflicts between themselves and their
teachers, parents and siblings, and throughout their adult lives.

Mediation and negotiation also have long been used to settle employment disputes. In the
consumer area the Better Business Bureau has implemented an arbitration program to
deal with a variety of consumer disputes. 13 In the context of environmental disputes,
mediation was used for the first time in our history in 1973 to settle a conflict concerning
whether a flood-control dam should be built on the Snoqualmie River near Seattle. 14 The
damming of the river had been debated unsuccessfully for fifteen years, but the dispute was
resolved by two mediators within a year.


Despite the increasing use of these creative forms of non-violent dispute resolution, there is
still a great deal of work to be done to promote these alternative forms of dispute resolution
. Non-violent dispute resolution may be more commonly used today, but these alternatives
are not generally visible in our communities. Moreover, the number of people skilled to
mediate local disputes, and interested in mediating such disputes is limited. There simply
are not enough facilities to train mediators and negotiators to resolve localized conflicts.
The Western Justice Center is contributing greatly to the application of alternative forms of
non-violent dispute resolution in community disputes in schools, and even internationally.
It is addressing both the concern for greater visibility and is contributing to train mediators.

You are engaged in a most important task here. I wish you every success as you begin to
use this third building, the Friends Building, to the benefit of this City, this State, the nation,
and even the larger community of nations.

1.  Bob Connors, Pastor Helps Solve Disputes in Church; Mediators Try to Keep Fights
     Out of courts, The Herald-Sun Bl (August 15, 1998).

2.  Id.

3.  See S. Goldberg, et al, Dispute Resolution 347 (1985).

4.  E. Brunet & C. Craver, Alternative Dispute Resolution: The Advocate's Perspective
     314315 (1997)

5.  America Bar Association, Alternative Means of Family Dispute Resolution 15 (1982).

6. See S. Goldberg, supra, at 313-14.

7.  See Brunet & Carver, supra, at 269 (summarizing state statutes).

8.  S. Goldberg, supra, at 314-15.

9.  M. Hansen, Mediation-Not for Adults Only, ABA Journal 104 (April 1997).

10. K. Kowalski, Peer Mediation Success Stories: in Nearly 10,000 Schools Nationwide,
       Peer Mediation Helps Teens Solve Problems Without Violence, Current Health, 1998
       WL 9587083 (Oct. 1, 1998).

11. C. Del Valle, Teenagers, Race and Tragedy, Newday, at B4 (July 20, 1998).

12. D. Sierpina, Peers Taking the Pressure Off Peers, New York Times, at 14CN, page
           3 (November 8, 1998).

13. S. Goldberg, et al, Dispute Resolution, supra, at 390.

14. Id., at 415-16.