ABSTRACT
Although family mediation originated or revived as a result of a critique of the adjudicatory system of dispute resolution, it has not been immune from criticism, facing scepticism and fear from many quarters. The critique of mediation arises from a number of divergent sources, from the purely legal and theoretical, to the empirical debates of the social sciences. This chapter deals only with the actual accusations levelled against mediation as a dispute resolution mechanism: the testing of these assertions and the empirical data which has resulted from this work is the subject of the next chapter.
