University offers mediation major

Shanghai University of Political Science and Law plans to launch a major in civil mediation in September to train a cadre of professional mediators to help resolve the hundreds of thousands of civil disputes that occur in the city each year, local media reported Monday.

Both the university and local authorities hope the graduates will help lend credibility to civil mediation, which the local government wants to develop to take some of the pressure off the local court system. "It will relieve the stress on the courts, which are burdened with a flood of unnecessary civil lawsuits, and make it easier for both sides of a conflict to obtain an acceptable agreement," said Guan Baoying, an administrative law professor and vice president at the university.

The university has admitted 25 students to the program, under which students will study law and public administration, focusing on civil mediation, Guan said.

Civil mediators in Shanghai handled 136,068 cases in the past half year, 94 percent of which were resolved, according to the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Justice, which oversees civil mediation cases in the city. However, only 23 percent of the city's 34,600 civil mediators were full-time professionals as of the end of 2010.

The lack of professionalism is one of the main problems facing civil mediation. Most of the mediators working in the city are government retirees or respected residents from local neighborhood committees, only some of whom have legal training or experience, according to an official surnamed Wu with the civil mediation office of the Gonghexin Road sub-district in Zhabei District.

"The dearth of public knowledge about civil mediation and the scarcity of professional mediators are two obstacles that civil mediation has to overcome," Wu told the Global Times.

The university has support from the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Justice, which promised to provide mediator positions to every graduate of the program, Guan said. With four years' professional training, the students will be able to apply legal theories they learn into civil mediation in order to make the job more professional.