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Ethan Katsh
Professor of Legal Studies
Director of the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution
Professor Katsh is a graduate of the Yale Law School and 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 scholarly contributions 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, built in collaboration with the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute, became publicly available in May, 2003.
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. He is also an adviser to SquareTrade.com, an Internet start-up focusing on online ADR.
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, and scheduled to be held in Hong Kong in December 2007 and Victoria (Canada) in June 2008. He has been Visiting Professor of Law and Cyberspace at Brandeis University, is on the Board of Advisors of the Democracy Design Workshop, serves on the legal advisory board of the InSites E-governance and Civic Engagement Project. and is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
For the past three 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.
Recent publications:
"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).
“Peer to Peer Meets the World of Legal Information: Encountering a New Paradigm” 99 Law Library Journal, 2007, pp. 365 – 376 (with Beth Noveck).
"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
Invited lectures and presentations Fall 2007:
October 11, 2007
Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice
Halifax, Nova Scotia
October 26, 2007
Asian Perspectives on ODR and Domain Name Dispute Resolution
China International and Economic and Trade Arbitration commission
Beijing, China
November 9, 2007
Experiments in Cyberjustice
University of Montreal
Montreal, Canada
December 4-5, 2007
6th United Nations Forum on Online Dispute Resolution
Hong Kong, china
