Justice in Negotiations and Conflict Resolution

Abstract

It is widely recognized that justice matters for negotiation and conflict resolution. However, the pluralism of moral opinions and concepts of justice also introduces new fields of conflict. Rudolf Schuessler shows that considerations of procedural justice and meta-justice generally fail to offer a safe way out of this impasse, because they too are subject to a pluralism of approaches. It follows that justice in negotiations and conflict resolution needs itself to be negotiated. The guiding view of justice for a process of negotiation is to be established by negotiation in this process. This puts particular emphasis on the responsibility and conflict-mitigating attitudes of the negotiating parties and on norms of mutual respect that support a shared quest for mutually acceptable views on justice.