Mediazione familiare: nuove professioni e il dibattito sulle alternative al giudizio

Family Mediation: A New Profession and the Debate About the Alternatives to Adjudication - Ivan Pupolizio’s book La mediazione familiare in Italia (Family Mediation in Italy) is the latest in a series that testifies to the increasing interest at work in Italy in topics of alternative conflict solving. The theoretical approach adopted to the topic is accompanied by evidence from professional practice and information about the authorities and subjects that work in the field of family mediation. Pupolizio takes an in-depth look at the practice of family mediation in Italy and draws up a summarised chronology of its development. Mediators do not investigate the couple’s experience as a means for understanding the causes of the problem, but work together with the parties to identify concrete solutions for the future. Mediators have clearly already started venturing along the path that leads to their professionalisation. Training whose purpose is to accredit family mediators will in due course flank basic training for lawyers who are not familiar with these procedures. Pupolizio spends some time and energy looking into the legislative aspects of the mediator’s professional practice. Today’s legislation offers several spaces for mediation, primarily when spouses separate. The book’s theoretical section discusses fears that the methods of alternative dispute resolution may lead to a privatisation of justice, dwelling in particular on the criticism expressed by the women’s movement, which considers that mediation, as opposed to the legal system, puts women at a disadvantage towards men. Pupolizio believes that alternative methods do not constitute a danger for equity when they are understood correctly to be methods of appropriate dispute resolution. (English texts revised by Pete Kercher);

Luigi Cominelli, Mediazione familiare: nuove professioni e il dibattito sulle alternative al giudizio in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO " 3/2008, pp 197-206, DOI: 10.3280/SD2008-003009