ODR and Ethics
The day of discussions, the master class, and the closing keynote at the conference in Rio went well. There is a huge amount of interest in online dispute resolution in Brazil, and there are a number of applications currently in use. The judiciary is particularly interested, as evidenced by two government ministers who spoke at the Rio conference. I was in pretty good company – sort of makes you wonder why they chose me for the closing keynote. I had several interesting conversations about the Brazilian presidential election that happened just before Julia and I flew into Sao Paulo. The consensus was that the election was a choice between two evils, and that Brazil is now headed down the same path that the US has been on since Trump was elected. For a number of reasons I chose not to make the trip to New Zealand, but I assume the existence of ICODR was announced there, and that I’ll be working as one of the founding Board Members starting later this year or early next year.