JDR, in one form or another, has been around for hundreds of years. The earliest examples involve Anglo-Saxon adjudication and arbitration that took place between the seventh and eleventh centuries A.D. (Sanchez 1996). In more recent centuries, judges have been called upon to settle, not adjudicate, all kinds of disputes, especially within families. In Canada, for the last thirty years, mini-trials (without juries) were promoted by the late Alberta Chief Justice William Ken Moore (Moore 1995). Throughout the 1980s, in both Canada and the U.S., the legal system placed increasing emphasis on what based on Frank Sander's ideas was coined as “the multi-door courthouse” and Judith Resnik called with some critical bite “the managerial judge,” encouraging the use of ADR to move cases off the court's docket (Sander 1979; Resnik 1982, 1995).

Sander's idea had an impact in the U.S. In 1980, Congress passed the Dispute Resolution Act “to provide financial assistance for the development and maintenance of effective, fair, inexpensive, and expeditious mechanisms for the resolution for minor disputes.” Then, in 1983, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were amended; Rule 16 endorsed the discussion of settlement at pre-trial conferences encouraging the parties to think hard about whether their dispute would be better resolved through voluntary resolution mechanisms than formal litigation.

The history of JDR in Canada is still an unfolding story aimed at imagining ways of empowering judges and parties to resolve their disputes and achieve a greater sense of justice.

The goal in a JDR remains to resolve a legal matter without consuming the usual level of court resources, while giving control back to the parties, control they relinquish when they choose to litigate. Giving the parties more authority and ensuring that they are treated fairly and respectfully is often the key to a greater sense of closure and satisfaction.

Anglo-Saxon Beginnings

In Valerie Sanchez's history of early ADR, she notes that Anglo-Saxon courts used a wide array of dispute resolution mechanisms akin to modern-day negotiation, mediation, arbitration and JDR. The emergence of Christian teachings paved the way for less vindictive conflict resolution that focused more on achieving peace.