Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) is a

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

-based

mediation Mediation is a structured, interactive process where an impartial third party neutral assists disputing parties in resolving conflict through the use of specialized communication and negotiation techniques. All participants in mediation are ...

and

alternative dispute resolution Alternative dispute resolution (ADR), or external dispute resolution (EDR), typically denotes a wide range of dispute resolution processes and techniques that parties can use to settle disputes with the help of a third party. They are used for ...

body. It was founded as a non-profit organisation in 1990, with the support of The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and a number of British businesses and law firms, to encourage the development and use of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and mediation in commercial disputes. Professor Karl Mackie, a barrister and psychologist, became the organisation's Chief Executive and Eileen Carroll QC (hon), a Trans-Atlantic partner with a law firm (who had been involved in the initiative to form CEDR) joined to become the Deputy Chief Executive in 1996. On 12 June 2010 it was announced in the Queen's Birthday Honours that Karl Mackie was appointed a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) by the UK Government for ‘services to mediation', the first citing of this reason for the award.Law Society Gazette, June 17 2010

Background

Initially CEDR's focus was, by necessity, UK-focused, where in the early 1990s mediation was not well established in business disputes. Through its campaigning and training work CEDR helped influence the civil justice system. In 1996 the then Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Harry Woolf (who now retired is Chair of CEDR's International Advisory Council), published his 'Access To Civil Justice Report' which encouraged the use of ADR, followed by the Civil Procedure Rules in 1999 which enabled judges to impose cost sanctions to either party when ADR was refused or ignored. These guidelines, along with case law (for example Dunnet v Rail