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Ethan Katsh
Director of the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution
Professor Emeritus of Legal Studies
Professor Katsh is currently serving as principal dispute resolution consultant for the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), a new federal agency mandated to provide mediation in Freedom of Information Act disputes. He has also recently been selected as the 2010-2011 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Haifa (Israel).
Professor Katsh is a graduate of the Yale Law School and was one of the first legal scholars to recognize the impact new information technologies would have on law. He has authored three books on law and technology, Law in a Digital World (Oxford University Press, 1995) The Electronic Media and the Transformation of Law (Oxford University Press, 1989), and, with Professor Rifkin, Online Dispute Resolution: Resolving Conflicts in Cyberspace (2001). His articles have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the University of Chicago Legal Forum, and other law reviews and legal periodicals. His pioneering scholarly contribution has been the subject of a Review Essay in Law and Social Inquiry (Summer 2002).
Since 1996, Professor Katsh has been involved in a series of activities related to online dispute resolution. He participated in the Virtual Magistrate project and was founder and co-director of the Online Ombuds Office. In 1997, with support from the Hewlett Foundation, he and Professor Rifkin founded the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution at the University of Massachusetts. In 2001, he received a grant from the Markle Foundation to improve accessibility to domain name dispute rulings. The domain name dispute database was built in collaboration with the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute.
From 1997-1999, Professor Katsh mediated a variety of disputes online, involving domain name/trademark issues, other intellectual property conflicts, disputes with Internet Service Providers, and others. In the Spring of 1999, he supervised a project with the online auction site eBay, in which over 150 disputes were mediated during a two week period. During the Summer of 1999, he co-founded Disputes.org, which later worked with eResolution to become one of four providers accredited by ICANN to resolve domain name disputes.
Professor Katsh has chaired the UN International Forums on Online Dispute Resolution, held in Geneva in 2002 and 2003, Melbourne in 2004, Cairo in 2006, Liverpool in 2007, Hong Kong in 2007, Victoria (Canada) in 2008, Haifa, Israel in June 2009 and the Forum scheduled to be held in /Buinos Aires in June 2010. He has been Visiting Professor of Law and Cyberspace at Brandeis University, is on the Board of Advisors of the Democracy Design Workshop, the legal advisory board of the InSites E-governance and Civic Engagement Project, the Board of Editors of Conflict Resolution Quarterly,and is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
For the past five years, Professor Katsh has been co-Principal Investigator, with Professor Lee Osterweil and Dr. Norman Sondheimer of the UMass Department of Computer Science, of a National Science Foundation funded project to model processes of online dispute resolution. This work is also being coordinated with the United States National Mediation Board. In 2007, this project received a second grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct further research on ODR processes.
Professor Katsh received the Chancellor's Medal and gave the campus Distinguished Faculty Lecture in October 2006.
Recent publications:
“Peer to Peer Meets the World of Legal Information: Encountering a New Paradigm” 99 Law Library Journal, 2007, pp. 365 – 376 (with Beth Noveck).
"Ten Years of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR): Looking at the Past and Constructing the Future,” University of Toledo Law Review, pp. 19-45, 1996 (with Leah Wing).
"Dispute Resolution Without Borders," First Monday (2006)
“Bringing Online Dispute Resolution to Virtual Worlds: Creating Processes Through Code,” New York Law School Law Review, v. 49, 2004, pp. 1101-1121
