Judging and Conciliation – Differentiations and Complementarities

Abstract

Diverse forms of conflict resolution were established throughout the course of history: state and non-state, judicial and extra judicial, consensual, authoritarian, contradictory forms, etc. This contribution ties in with a German tradition of discussions which broaches the issue of the alternatives of conflict resolution under the phrase “Richten oder Schlichten (Judging or conciliation). The paper sketches the life path of this discussion and develops some tentative considerations on how semantic confrontations of “Richten” and “Schlichten” can be made palatable in order to develop research questions and analytical patterns from a historical as well as a current-day perspective.

Keywords: dispute resolution, courts, non-state justice, civil procedure, legal history