The effect of court-mandated mediation on the length of court proceedings in the Czech Republic

Dagmar Brožová () and Jan Zouhar ()
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Dagmar Brožová: Prague University of Economics and Business
Jan Zouhar: Prague University of Economics and Business

European Journal of Law and Economics, 2022, vol. 53, issue 3, No 6, 485-508

Abstract: Abstract The article explores the use of mediation in custody and civil disputes in court practice in the Czech Republic. The option for a court to order mediation in a dispute was enabled by the Mediation Act of 2012, with the proclaimed benefit of shortening the length of the dispute. We put these claims to test using data provided by the Ministry of Justice of the Czech Republic based on the so-called statistical sheets of district and regional courts. The dataset covers over 2 million custody and civil disputes resolved between 2013 and 2018. Descriptive analysis reveals that the courts’ use of mediation is still sporadic and regionally clustered. Regression analyses show that, contrary to the expectations, the custody (civil) disputes with mandated mediation were on average 3 (2.5) times longer than their counterparts without mediation, after accounting for several control variables. This effect varies over time and with the dispute’s subject matter.

Keywords: Mediation; Mediation efficiency; Case resolution time; Custody disputes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K0 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:ejlwec:v:53:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s10657-022-09729-6

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DOI: 10.1007/s10657-022-09729-6

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