ABSTRACT
Lawyers and judges in the United States have been pummeled in the popular media and in dispute resolution journals by an accelerating wave of antagonism toward litigation and the adversarial process. This chapter argues that harmony ideology - manifested in the reluctance of many lawyers to defend their profession against the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) onslaught - finds fertile ground through mechanisms of hierarchy and coercive harmony. The rationalization for ADR was from the outset articulated as protecting the courts from the "garbage cases," such as gender, environmental, and consumer cases, and protecting the courts from overload. ADR is a hegemonic movement, in which the exercise of political control working through a combination of persuasion and force makes it appear as if persuasion is the predominant feature. In any period of history, harmony ideology is accompanied by an intolerance for conflict.
