The Mediation Process: Challenges to Neutrality and the Delivery of Procedural Justice

Abstract

Abstract Ethnographic data suggest that the mediator role transcends that of the neutral third-party intervener described in the literature. The mediator becomes part of the mediated negotiation process, at times separate from the parties, aligned with the parties or in opposition to the parties. This is analysed in this article in relation to concepts of neutrality and procedural justice, two concepts much discussed in the mediation literature, often recognised as core features of the mediation process. The justice consciousness of the parties to the process is also explored through ethnographic data for what it reveals about concepts of justice from the parties’ perspective. The article concludes by challenging the dictum of the mediation literature that the process offers procedural justice to its participants.