The course of ecommerce is not always smooth. Disputes are inevitable. These disputes will have to be resolved if ecommerce is to develop to its full potential. This Article examines the feasibility of online mediation. It evaluates some modalities, presents cross-cultural mediation as a theoretical construct to describe online mediation, and recommends guidelines for the practice of online mediation. Mediation exists on a continuum from face-to-face to pure online mediation. Most of the legal literature evaluating the potential of online mediation can be best characterized as the battle of the anecdotes. No legal scholars have looked at the rich social science literature on the effects of computer-mediated communications.
