In Formalisation and Flexibilisation in Dispute Resolution, scholars from four continents examine both historical and recent developments that cast doubt on the validity of the widespread assumption that alternative dispute resolution (ADR) can be distinguished from state-based proceedings by invoking the contrasting labels of informal justice versus formal law.

Joachim Zekoll holds the chair of Private Law, Civil Procedure, and Comparative Law at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany since 2001. From 1992 until 2001, he was on the faculty of the Tulane University School of Law (New Orleans), serving as the John Minor Wisdom Professor of Law from 1999 until 2001. From 2003 to 2007, concurrently with his appointment in Frankfurt, he was the A.D. Freeman Professor of Law at Tulane. Joachim Zekoll is a member of the American Law Institute and the International Academy of Comparative Law. He has published widely in the fields of conflict of laws and procedure and comparative law.
Moritz Bälz holds the Chair of Japanese Law and its Cultural Foundations at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany since 2008. Prior to joining the faculty of law and the Interdisciplinary Centre for East Asian Studies (IZO) at Goethe University he has been working with international law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in New York and Frankfurt for several years. His research focuses on business law from a comparative perspective as well as on issues of dispute resolution in Japan. He serves as co-editor of Zeitschrift für Japanisches Recht/Journal of Japanese Law.
Iwo Amelung is Professor of Chinese Studies at Goethe Unviversity, Frankfurt am Main since 2007. Before joining the Interdisciplinary Centre for East Asian Studies (IZO) and the Institute for East Asian Philologies he has worked as managing director at the European Center of Chinese Studies at Peking University in Beijing. His main research interests are the social history of late Imperial China as well as processes of the circualation and appropriation of knowledge between China and the West during the 19th and 20th centuries.