Originally from Dispute Resolution Journal

If you had wanted a speaker who was highly knowledgeable in the nuances of arbitration, you most assuredly would not have chosen me. But I hasten to say I do not fault your program chairman far electing me; I think those who are devoted to a particular enterprise, and knowledgeable about it, can more often than not benefit by listening a short while to a visitor from the outside world.

It is something of a commonplace that most of us tend to regard the familiar as the necessary. Yet if we think about it, this is by no means invariably the case. We think of courthouses as public buildings, which of course they are, judges and clerks as public officials, which they are, and we think in general that the settlement of disputes such as courts traditionally settle is a function of the public or governmental sector of our society. We think of most hospitals, on the other hand, as private, non-profit institutions, which most of them surely were a generation ago, and doctors and nurses as private entrepreneurs and employees.