In the last two decades my research has focused on the impact of new technologies on dispute resolution.

In my current ERC-funded project, my focus is on the significance and implications of the shift from human third party to algorithms. The research seeks to understand the impact of automation on our understanding of core concepts, values and goals of processes whose essence has stemmed from human involvement. The research will study what I call sites of “DRA in action” – “online dispute resolution” (or “ODR”) platforms that employ some degree of automation, substituting for various functions traditionally employed by human third parties.

My previous work began in parallel to the early rise of ODR. What started in the e-commerce setting in the 1990s and early 2000s, expanded to courts and to more “traditional” types of disputes in the following decades, and became almost mainstream during the pandemic.  

These developments have raised many important questions, such as: what role does the physical congregation in court play in resolving disputes? How can the fairness and neutrality of the process be preserved from afar? Can proceedings conducted in writing or via video fulfill a party’s need for “voice”? What are the implications of different online mediums on outcomes of the dispute, and on the legitimacy of the process? How do the answers to these questions change across contexts, and for different types of disputes and parties?

I have studied these questions throughout my academic career, first as a doctoral student and in recent years as a faculty member at the Haifa Law Faculty in Israel. Some of these questions were addressed in a book entitled “Digital Justice: Technology and The Internet of Disputes” (Oxford University Press), co-authored with Prof. Ethan Katsh, the founder of the field of ODR. The book explores the significance of online proceedings for access to justice and fairness of proceedings and outcomes, a topic I also explored in other articles and publications.

Over the years, my conceptual work evolved to include empirical research conducted in the U.S. and Israel. I find that by employing a mixed methods approach and drawing on empirical insights to rethink prevailing theories and conceptual frameworks, I can generate meaningful insights on the emerging dispute resolution landscape.

In one research project, Prof. Avital Mentovich and Prof. J.J. Prescott and I found that disparities in legal outcomes for racial minorities that existed in face-to-face traffic cases were eliminated when handled by judges from afar via text-based proceedings. In another paper, we show that legitimacy in online proceedings is shaped by perceptions of access to justice (a measure we developed) alongside perceptions of procedural justice, and found that for low-income parties, access to justice was the main predictor of legitimacy of courts. In another project conducted with Prof. Ayelet Sela and Adv. Sivan Shachar, we studied the use of document-based written and video proceedings in the work of an administrative tribunal handling COVID-related appeals regarding compensation to businesses. Our findings suggest that in this context both mediums worked well from an access to justice and procedural justice perspective, with a finding of slightly more favorable perceptions of the fairness of video hearings. The work is still in progress, but some of our findings can be accessed in a Report prepared for the Ministry of Justice.