The concept of law is as ancient as mankind.

From domestic interaction to group structures, rules of law have impacted how individuals deal with conflict. Rules that govern human interaction are the foundation of moral responsible societies. The need for law assumes that "all conflict has a normative dimension and thus must be resolved by the application of morally responsible rules" MacFarlane, J. (Ed.). (1999) in Dispute Resolution: Reading and Case Studies. Law is pervasive and permanent in all human conflict. "From its inception, law has been at work shaping and reshaping the social order," said Jenkins, I. (1980) in his book, Social Order and the Limits of the Law. In essence, the function of law is to establish rules and procedures that constrain the power of all parties, hold all parties accountable for their actions, and prohibit the accumulation of autocratic or oligarchic power. It provides a variety of means for the nonviolent resolution of disputes between private individuals, between groups, or between these actors and the government. Sources of law can be broken into three camps: natural law, positive law and realism. Commenting on the theory of natural law, Fienberg and Coleman (2000) quote St. Thomas Aquinas: "Law is nothing else than an ordinance of reason for the promotion of the common good, made by him who has the care of the community and promulgated". The positivists' view of understanding the concept of law focuses on the aspect that law is a command of the generally adhered to sets of rules and the power to enforce them. Realism deals with the subjective influence of the particular parties involved in the dispensing of law. In all these paradigms, the concept of law, as an instrument of managing conflict, is unavoidable. The concept of law is therefore bigger than the source it derives from or the processes used to administrate it. Adjudication and facilitation are the two main processes dealing with the management of conflict that are considered in this paper. Conflict is inevitable and perpetual in all human interaction. "Human beings engage in conflict. Aggression, warfare, violence seemingly equate with the human condition," Tidwell. Conflict has two faces: that which negatively affects society through violent acts between people, and that which positively contributes to the development of human relationships and social interaction. Violent acts against humanity and society call for a different kind of treatment than do transformational conflicts. Both require rules to ensure that justice prevails and truth is pursued. International conflicts and conflicts within divergent cultures necessitate flexibility in management approaches and understanding of context and procedure in order to choose an appropriate mode of dispute resolution. MacFarlane underscores the need for the evaluation of the relationship between the role of law and the management of conflict when she says: "Modern conflict theorists have moved away from the study of rules and systems and toward the study of disputes themselves. This challenges students of dispute resolution to consider the relationship of rules to conflict management and dispute resolution, both as a matter of theory and in practice". The relationship between law and conflict management has four components: stated assumptions of law, underlying values that affect the relationship, the impact of the legal

process on present day forms of dispute resolution models, and questions for future ponderings. Assumptions of law. It is assumed that the virtues of accountability and love are the soil in which the concept of law has grown. It is further assumed that the concept of law is the tree trunk on which adjudication and facilitation theories and practices branch out. If this is true, then the role of law is to nurture and channel the development of how people and groups of people manage conflict. In other words, law is the banks on either side of the river of the varieties of dispute resolution. "The Law is often thought of as being the guardian of our liberties, and rightly so," Leiser. This is to suggest that adjudication and facilitation (and the subsequent branches of both theories and methodologies) stem from the same tree and flow in the same water. "Given . . . that the mediator constructs a reality within the mediation setting through a number of strategies that themselves assume the normatively of autonomous moral responsibility and a conflict-purged community, the mediation process becomes a de facto extension of positive liberal law" Tie, 1999. What are the implications of this suggestion? Could the challenge of the adjudicators in the 1980's against the earlier facilitators find merit in rejecting mediation as scheme? One such proponent of adjudication believes that mediation schemes provide second class justice for the poor. Does facilitation water down justice? Is it really an alternative to adjudication? Is it not possible that both adjudication and facilitation, although flawed systems in their own way are aiming for the same outcome and built on the same values? They are both aiming to bring accountability and common good into the realm of conflict management. Pirie, 2000, suggests the same conclusion when he states: "ADR [Alternative Dispute Resolution which encompasses the many approaches to facilitation] is not a new idea but rather a modern reflection of the legal profession's long standing support for quality legal services". Facilitation has been seen as challenging the establish status quo of the law for many years. However, as Tie also comments that which challenges the law already belongs to law and is thus liable to reflect the same desire for closure and certitude that characterizes professionalized justice. In all of these assumptions, one common factor is revealed: law and conflict management have an enduring relationship of dealing with human interaction. Underlying values that affect the relationship. Values are based on a belief system and can be classified twofold: intrinsic and extrinsic. "Something is intrinsically valuable if we value it for its own sake," Marmor, 2000. As stated earlier, the belief system on which law is founded has to do with accountability and love. Truth, justice, security, and fairness are the intrinsic values of both adjudication and facilitation. "The societal consensus that the adjudicatory process achieves fairness of results proceeds from a sense that equal treatment is at the heart of the administration of justice," Carbonneau, 1989. He goes on to state that "truth and fairness work hand in hand; they are the foundation elements of a socially valid and morally acceptable process of legal adjudication". Does not facilitation aim to achieve similar values of fairness and justice in the settlement of a dispute? It does.

Where adjudication and facilitation differ is in their stated extrinsic values. Adjudication values public development of laws through dealing with private disputes. "The public life conception underlines contemporary civic republicans approval of deliberate democracy, by which they mean the public use of reason and deliberation in making public decisions" MacFarlane. Facilitation prefers placing the private rights over the public process in order to achieve settlement. Cloke (2000), in his defaming of the legal system, compares extrinsic values of the two branches of the concept of law: "The law [adjudication] is designed to contain and control conflict, not resolve and transform it; to terminate disagreements not to learn from them; to suppress emotions, not complete them; to settle cases, not search for underlying issues; a third party decision, not facilitate consensus" Mediation is one of the many branches of facilitation and it values the transformation of the individual involved in disputes over the public resolution to conflict. Baruch & Folger, 1994, states that Mediation's greatest value lies in its potential not only to find solutions to people's problems but to change people themselves for the better, in the midst of conflict. Adjudication and facilitation are two branches from the same tree, the trunk of which is law and the roots of which are the values of law. Adjudication is thought to serve important values such as rationality, impartiality, fairness and consistency (Lyons, 1984). Facilitation, on the other hand, may appear to be irrational at times. But this is not the case. It is simply alternatively different in approach and style. "Alternative medicine and traditional medicine could be compared to alternative dispute resolution and law. Medicine may be ahead of law in making its decision but one might expect law would, in a similar way, seek to join with those parts of ADR that can be complementary to laws enterprise and reject those parts of any concern" Pirie. In the past, the value of justice has been placed solely on the back of the adjudication system. However, there are now additional ways to deal with disputes or manage conflict and the legal system is not the only 'just' method. New Zealand people attempt at using alternative dispute resolution for the aboriginal dispute. Povlich states that you can pursue a 'just' legal process of mediation. As we explore the complementary values of facilitation and adjudication practitioners will lead theorist in developing a common understanding of how the law can relate more effectively to the management of conflict. Impact of the legal process. Although the legal system is making room for alternative methods of dealing with disputes there is still a wide valley between the opposing opinions of the impact of law on conflict management. Harrington takes the position that informal justice [facilitation] expands the capacity of the formal system, legitimates the basic approach of the system, fails to expand community control, fails to advance rights and social justice, and diverts attention from the courts as an important area for struggle. However, a more recent and lenient attitude is found in Pirie. Instead of standing in opposition to adjudication, ADR [facilitation] has come to be

viewed as a concept that points to the need for evaluating the entire continuum of dispute resolution techniques, skills and resources before choosing the right disputing steps to take. In 1976, Frank Sander spoke of a vision of not having a court house but a Dispute Resolution Center. That vision may have been prophetically inspired and may contain the best hope for a preferred future reality. The charges of failure of the court systems to provide adequate and quick justice are still voiced in the streets and declared by new alternative dispute resolution practitioners. Some of this may be due to the necessity of gaining enough momentum to sustain a viable mediation business. However, the fact that it does take more time and money than it should to settle some cases remain a valid point. On the other hand, Carbonneau questions the point when he says that considerations of mere efficiency cost and time prohibit the use of consecrated legal procedures to resolve private law grievances is a should. Are the private rights any less fundamental constitutionally than basic political freedoms? He complains the possibility that the undoing of democratic and judicial values may be a costly cure for the perceived pathology in the legal adjudicatory procedures. On the other side of Carbonneau, in the valley of opinions regarding the impact of law on conflict management is Cloke. He believes that the new roles for mediation will break the paradigm of law and return it to its original purpose, which was to resolve conflict. Mediation is justice coming full circle, a return to the ancient tribal principles of wisdom, compassion, honesty, self-revelation, healing and forgiveness. The widespread use of mediation within criminal issues has the potential to reduce the level of conflict that is needed for widespread openness to emerge towards alternative conceptions of law. Crime is defined as a violation against human relationships instead of a breaking of the law. This altered understanding of crime is a foundational disparity from adjudication in restorative justice. As to justice being served, he states that whatever agreement the victim and offender make will reflect justice that is meaningful to them, rather than being limited to the narrow definitions of the law. He describes a process of mediation that involves the courts, the offender and the victims of violent crimes. He separates violence against persons from those against the state and treats them differently. His contrast between retributive and restorative justice places human dignity at the core of how the law impacts conflict management. Although it is not the only approach being considered in these challenging days of dealing with conflict, it has the potential of providing a way of combining the law and conflict management by facilitating the values and goals of all parties involved. Questions One of the questions that have bothered me in the research of this paper concerns the ability or inability of the facilitation process to enforce their agreements without the use of law. If two parties agree to facilitate their dispute instead of using the process of adjudication, and if they come to an agreed upon settlement, who will enforce it if there is no legal document? Unfortunately, the days are gone where 'men of honor' would settle with the handshake or in front of one witness. So if the ground in which the concept of law has grown up is

accountability, who will hold these two parties accountable? Pirie expressed another question of interest: Can a mediator be negligent? What if the settlement was wrong or broke some constitutional or criminal law? There may be honor among thieves but is this the appropriate justice or the pursuit of truth that facilitation and adjudication value? Other questions have been pondered in my mind during these days. Can the legal system make more room for alternative styles of conflict resolution? Will lawyers and judges embrace the validity of alternative dispute resolution with the same tepidness that nurses and doctors had for alternative medicine years ago? Is it inevitable that facilitation and it varied approaches to managing conflict has so impacted the legal system that there is no turning back? What about the development of public laws and issues of morality? Can facilitation handle the complexity of law making? In conclusion, law is us as remedy grievances among members of a society. Law also provides means of resolving disputes by providing a formalized mechanism and procedures which regulate the ways in the ways in which rights and liabilities are defended and enforced. Designated institutions such as courts, tribunals and arbitrators shall determine the claims of parties. Law provides and orderly and rational substitute for private vengeance, self-help or open conflict.