1 An earlier of this paper was presented to the Law Faculty during my stay as a visiting researcher at the Osaka University Graduate School of Law and Politics in summer 2005. I am very grateful to the Osaka Law Faculty and especially to Professor Kota Fukui for my invitation to Japan. A translation of this article into Japanese is being published in September 2006 in the Osaka Law Review.Google Scholar

2 See, for the use of this term Berman, Law and Revolution The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition, (1983).Google Scholar

3 Article 6 para. 1 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights reads: “In the determination of his civil rights and obligations …, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law. Judgment shall be pronounced publicly …”Google Scholar

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6 Katsh/Rifkin, Online Dispute Resolution: Resolving Conflicts in Cyberspace 93 (2001).; Lodder/Thiessen, The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Online Dispute Resolution, in: Online Dispute Resolution (ODR), Papers and Proceedings of the 2003 United Nations Forum on ODR (Katsh/Choi eds., 2003) available at http://www.odr.info/unece2003/pdf/lodder_thiessen.pdf.Google Scholar

7 See, Teitz, Providing Legal Services for the Middle Class in Cyberspace: The Promise and Challenge of On-line Dispute Resolution, 70 Fordham Int'l L.J. 985, 990-995 (2001).Google Scholar

8 See, Gibbons, Creating a Market for Justice. A Market Incentive Solution to Regulating the Playing Field: Judicial Deference, Judicial Review, Due Process, and Fair Play in Online Consumer Arbitration, 23 Nw. J. Int'l L. & Bus. 1 (2003); Bingham, Control over Dispute-System Design and Mandatory Commercial Arbitration, 67 Law & Contemporary Problems 237 (2004).Google Scholar

9 Bates, Consumer's Dream Or Pandora's Box: Is Arbitration a Viable Option for Cross-Border Consumer Disputes, 27 Fordham Int'l L.J. 823 (2004); more generally Goodman, The Pros and Cons of online dispute resolution: an assessment of cyber-mediation websites, Duke Law & Technology Review 0004 (2003) available at http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2003dltr0004.html.Google Scholar

10 Kojima, A Planetary System of Justice, in: Civil Procedure and ADR in Japan, 10 (2004); Kojima, Dispute Resolution Systems and Legal Culture in: Civil Procedure and ADR in Japan, 292 (2004).Google Scholar

11 For the importance of party autonomy and consent in the litigation process see Wagner, Prozeßverträge. Privatautonomie im Verfahrensrecht, (1998).Google Scholar

12 For these two potential meanings of ODR see Hörnle, Disputes Solved in Cyberspace and the Rule of Law, 2001 (2) Journal of Information Law and Technology (JILT) available at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/jilt/2001_2/hornle/; Teitz, supra note 7, at 990.; Schultz, 'Does Online Dispute Resolution Need Governmental Intervention? The Case for Architectures of Control and Trust', 6 North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology (2004) 71.; Ponte/Cavenagh, Cyberjustice: Online Dispute Resolution, (2004).; Kaufmann-Kohler/Schultz, Online Dispute Resolution: Challenges for Contemporary Justice (2004).Google Scholar

13 Tyler, Conley, 115 and Counting: The State of ODR 2004, in: Proceedings of the Third Annual Forum on Online Dispute Resolution, (Melissa Conley Tyler, Ethan Katsh, and Daewon Choi eds., 2004) available at http://www.odr.info/unforum2004/ConleyTyler.htm.Google Scholar

14 See Tamberlin, Online Dispute Resolution and the Courts, in: Proceedings of the Third Annual Forum on Online Dispute Resolution, (Melissa Conley Tyler, Ethan Katsh, and Daewon Choi eds., 2004) available at http://www.odr.info/unforum2004/tamberlin.htm: on a pilot project in Australia; On the pilot project at the German “Bundesgerichtshof” see the presentation available at http://www.bundesgerichtshof.de/docs/bgh_erv_praesentation_2002-07-26.pdf; within this project a XML-based software for standardized exchange of data was developed, which is called “XJustiz”.Google Scholar

15 Available at http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp.htm.Google Scholar

16 As of July 24, 2006, see: http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/statistics/cumulative/results.html.Google Scholar

17 As of July 24, 2006, see: www.squaretrade.com (About us).Google Scholar

18 See, Calliess, Grenzüberschreitende Verbraucherverträge, Ius Privatum 103, (2006), ch. 6, 262-278, also available at http://www.jura.uni-frankfurt.de/ifawz1/teubner/dokumente/Calliess Globale Zivilregimes.pdf; see as well Helfer, Whither the UDRP: Autonomous, Americanized or Cosmopolitan?, 12 Cardozo Journal of International & Comparative Law (Cardozo J. Int'l & Comp. L.) 493 (2004).; Brannigan, The UDRP: How Do You Spell Success?, 5 Digital Technology Law Journal (2004); Dinwoodie, Detaching Trademark Law From The Nation-State, 41 Houston Law Review 885 (2004).Google Scholar

19 See overview at http://pages.ebay.com/services/; Baron, Private Ordering on the Internet: The EBay Community of Traders, 4 Business and Politics (2002), available at http://www.bepress.com/bap/vol4/iss3/art1; Schultz, eBay: un système juridique en formation?, 22 Revue du Droit des Technologies et de l'Information, 27-51 (2005).Google Scholar

20 For the following see, Abernethy, Building Large-Scale Online Dispute Resolution & Trustmark Systems, in:, Online Dispute Resolution (ODR), Papers and Proceedings of the 2003 United Nations Forum on ODR (Katsh/Choi eds., .2003) available at http://www.odr.info/unece2003/pdf/Abernethy.pdf.Google Scholar

21 The term “legal bond” is being used in a very broad sense, including not only contractual design but also all kinds of “private ordering”, see in more detail Mifsud Bonnici/de Vey Mestdagh, On the use of legal measures to entice participation in Online Dispute Resolution systems for the settlement of online-related disputes, in: Second International ODR Workshop, 31-42 (Zeleznikow/Lodder eds., 2005), available at http://odrworkshop.info/papers2005/odrworkshop2005Bol.pdf.Google Scholar

22 For details see Calliess, supra, note 18, 262 ff.Google Scholar

23 See Peterson, General Counsel of the American Arbitration Association, June 2000 Statement at the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives of the 106th Congress on the draft “Fairness and Voluntary Arbitration Act” H.R. 534 available at http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju65871.000/hju65871_0. htm; see also, Abernethy, supra note 20 at 8.Google Scholar

24 OECD, Guidelines for Consumer Protection in the Context of Electronic Commerce (1999) available at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/18/13/34023235.pdf.Google Scholar

25 See the very early analysis of Pichler, Trust and Reliance – Enforcement and Compliance: Enhancing Consumer Confidence in the Electronic Marketplace, JSM Thesis, Stanford 2000 available at http://www.law.stanford.edu/library/biblio/rufus.pdf; De Bruin, Consumer Trust in Electronic Commerce: Time for Best Practice, (2002); Calliess, supra note 18 at. 7.Google Scholar

26 See, http://www.bbbonline.org/consumer.Google Scholar

27 As of July 24, 2006, see, http://www.trustedshops.de/de/trustedshops/index.html.Google Scholar

28 See, www.trustuk.org.uk; for a similar German version see: www.internet-guetesiegel.de.Google Scholar

29 See, http://www.ecom.jp/en/index.html.Google Scholar

30 See, http://www.jadma.org/e_page/index_e.shtml.Google Scholar

31 The JADMA Guidelines available at http://www.jadma.org/e_page/guide_1e.html.Google Scholar

32 See, http://www.jcci.or.jp/home-e.html.Google Scholar

33 See, http://mark.cin.or.jp.Google Scholar

34 See, Sawada, Building Trust in Japanese EC Market, 22 September 2004, Presentation Slides, available at http://www.ecom.jp/adr/en/html/Outline%20of%20ECOM%20ADR%20Office.pdf.Google Scholar

35 See, http://www.ecom.jp/adr/en/index.html as well as the outline in Sawada (FN 34). As of March 2006, however, ECOM ADR ceased its operations.Google Scholar

36 E.g. in the account of Conley Tyler, supra note 12, not a single one is headquartered in Japan, available at http://www.odr.info/unforum2004/ConleyTyler.htm; And on the webpage of ADRJapan only foreign ODR-projects are linked: http://www.adr.gr.jp/adr.html.Google Scholar

37 See, Sawada, note 34.Google Scholar

38 See, http://www.meti.go.jp/english/information/data/IT-policy/trust-mark.htm.Google Scholar

39 See, www.onlineconfidence.org.Google Scholar

40 For a list with links to members see, http://www.globaltrustmarkalliance.org/members.asp.Google Scholar

41 See, http://www.gbde.org/consumerconfidence.html.Google Scholar

42 Available at, http://www.gbde.org/agreements/adragreement03.pdf.Google Scholar

43 http://www.iccwbo.org/home/statements_rules/statements/2004/DISPUTES-rev.pdf.Google Scholar

44 The ABA Best Practices are reprinted as an Annex to Calliess, supra, note 18, 445–455.Google Scholar

45 For details see, Calliess, supra, note 18, 347–362.Google Scholar

46 See, Sawada, note 34.Google Scholar

47 See, http://www.crossborderadr.org/ Google Scholar

48 See, http://www.bbb.org/alerts/article.asp?ID=658.Google Scholar

49 See only Calliess, Value-added Norms, Local Litigation and Global Enforcement: why the Brussels-Philosophy failed in The Hague, 5 German Law Journal (2004) available at http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=527.Google Scholar

50 The early European model of limitation of choice of law for consumer contracts in Art. 5 of the 1980 Rome Convention was recently copied by the USA in the revised Art. 1-301 of the Uniform Commercial Code (2001), and Japan is considering introducing a comparable “country of consumer law applies”-rule in the context of the current reform of the Horei (Law No. 10 of 1898).Google Scholar

51 On 15 December 2005 the European Commission presented a proposal for a Regulation on the law applicable to contractual obligations (Rome I), where the reformed Art. 5 abolishes choice of law in consumer contracts completely: COM (2005) 650 final.Google Scholar

52 See, Hadfield, Privatizing Commercial Law, 24 Regulation 40 (2001); Bernstein, Private Commercial Law in the Cotton Industry, 99 Michigan Law Review 1724 (2001); Aviram, A Network Effects Analysis of Private Ordering, (Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper 2003/80) with further references.Google Scholar

53 See, Berger (ed.), The Practice of Transnational Law (2001); Zumbansen, Piercing the Legal Veil: Commercial Arbitration and Transnational Law, 8 European Law Journal 400 (2002).Google Scholar

54 Supra notes 7 & 8.Google Scholar

55 Art. 3 para. 2 of the Supplementary Provisions of the Arbitration Act (Law No. 138 of 2003); see Nakamura, Salient Features of the New Japanese Arbitration Law Based Upon the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration, JCAA Newsletter, April 2004, at 5 available at http://jcaa.or.jp/e/arbitration-e/syuppan-e/newslet/news17.pdf. However, since Japan had not made a reservation to apply the 1958 New York Convention to commercial disputes only, foreign arbitral awards will continue to be recognised and enforced on consumers in Japan.Google Scholar