Introduction

Dispute resolution enhanced by technology can be approached from both a technical angle and from a legal angle. At first sight there seems to be a clear distinction between these approaches. For instance, design decisions seem typical for the technical angle, whereas disclosure of specific information appears to be a legal issue. However, design decisions can be influenced by legal norms, and fulfilling information requirements can have consequences for the design. This illustrates that law and technology cannot be fully separated, but are better approached in combination (Lodder and Oskamp 2006).

In this chapter, our starting point is the law and legal norms, but our discussions are also relevant from a technology perspective. We specifically concentrate on norms applicable to online forms of dispute resolution.

The best-known general sources for norms and Online Dispute Resolution are the European Union recommendations on online arbitration (1998) and online mediation (2001) and ABA's Recommended Best Practices for Online Dispute Resolution Service Providers. We will discuss these three initiatives. We discuss what we consider are the pivotal norms that providers of technology-enhanced dispute resolution should follow.

In this chapter our approach is to address a very general norm first (Section 2.3), and then discuss norms on Alternative Dispute Resolution (Section 2.4), online activities (Section 2.5) and Online Dispute Resolution (Section 2.6). We start, however, with an overview of existing work on the topic.