Joseph B. Stulberg

Michael E. Moritz Chair in Alternative Dispute Resolution

 Professor Joseph B. Stulberg, the Michael E. Moritz Chair in Alternative Dispute Resolution, teaches courses primarily in the area of alternative dispute resolution, including Legal Negotiation and the Multiparty Mediation Practicum, as well as Jurisprudence. He earned his J.D. from New York University School of Law and his Ph.D. in moral philosophy from the University of Rochester. 

 

Stulberg is one of 10 international scholars who have been awarded a 2012 Ikerbasque Research Fellowship by the Basque Foundation for Science, based in Bilbao, Spain.

 

Stulberg has been active in the ADR field as a practitioner, scholar, and teacher since 1973.  As a regional director and then vice president of the American Arbitration Association in charge of its Community Dispute Services, and thereafter in private practice, Stulberg has mediated disputes of national significance involving Native American land claims, federal/state/local budget negotiations, police-community tensions, and environmental controversies; he has led the design and implementation efforts of numerous court-annexed, agency-based, and school mediation programs. At Wayne State University, he directed the university’s interdisciplinary Master of Arts in Industrial Relations Program and then created and co-directed the university’s Master of Arts in Dispute Resolution program.  Before joining Moritz in 1998, he was professor of law and director of advanced studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law, where he led the formation of the country’s first LL.M. Program in Dispute Resolution. 

 

Known as one of the nation’s pre-eminent mediator trainers, Stulberg developed and conducted the prototype 40-hour mediator training programs for the supreme courts of Florida and Michigan and such government agencies as the Louisiana Office of Workers Compensation.  In collaboration with Safe Horizons, he designed and implemented the first peer-mediation training program for the New York City public schools. He has trained more than 8,500 people in 45 states to serve in court, agency-based or community-based dispute resolution programs.

 

Stulberg has written widely on theoretical, policy and practice issues in dispute resolution.  His most recent book on mediation strategy and theory, The Middle Voice (with Lela P. Love), appeared in 2009. He has taught short courses on dispute resolution theory, negotiation, and mediation at multiple U.S. law schools and universities; teamed with Partners for Democratic Change to deliver dispute resolution training programs to leaders of governmental agencies and NGOs in Central and Eastern Europe;  and, together with his longtime professional collaborator, Professor Lela P. Love, taught courses on mediation theory and practice for government leaders and university students in Western, Central and, Eastern Europe.

 

Stulberg currently serves as co-chair of the editorial board of Dispute Resolution Magazine, the publication of the 18,000-member Section of Dispute Resolution of the American Bar Association. He served as a member of the Advisory Committee on Dispute Resolution to The Supreme Court of Ohio from 1999-2011; chaired the national Task Force of the Association for Conflict Resolution that analyzed the Arbitration Fairness Act (2009); and served as reporter for the Joint Committee on the Model Standards of Conduct for Mediators (2005). He is the recipient of The Ohio State University Faculty Award for Excellence in Community-Based Scholarship (2003) and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rochester Center for Dispute Settlement (2003); he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American College of Civil Trial Mediators. Stulberg served as an associate dean at Moritz from 2004-2009.

 

Stulberg's recent article Mediation's Promise is available here.