JCR Collaboratory

the judicial conflict resolution (jcr) collaboratory is a five-year-long research conducted in israel, italy, and england and wales, supported by a grant from the european research council (erc). the research examines contemporary roles of judges in civil and criminal courts in which trials are vanishing. we explore the prevalent settlement and plea-bargain culture, where conflict resolution practices are performed in the shadow of authority. this investigation is motivated by two working hypotheses: first, that many case dispositions occur without trial or without a contested judgment, as the result of active conflict resolution activities conducted by the presiding judge(s); and second, that these jcr activities are not necessarily reflected in the formal case record. using a mixed-methods approach, the project aims to capture and analyze jcr practices, reflect on the changing roles of judges, develop a descriptive typology of settlement-inducing roles that judges play in court heari