Stanford CIS

Colin Rule

Non-Residential Fellow

Colin Rule has worked at the intersection of technology and conflict resolution for the last two decades. He is CEO of Modria.com, an online dispute resolution service provider in Silicon Valley, and Co-Chair of the Advisory Board of the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution at UMass-Amherst. From 2003 to 2011 he served as eBay and PayPal's first director of Online Dispute Resolution, designing and implementing systems that now resolve more than 60 million disputes each year.

Mr. Rule is the author of Online Dispute Resolution for Business, published by Jossey-Bass in September 2002. He has presented and trained around the world for organizations including the U.S. Department of State, UNCITRAL, the International Chamber of Commerce, and the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution, as well as teaching at UMass-Amherst, Stanford, Southern Methodist University, and Hastings College of the Law. He has written and been interviewed extensively about the Internet since 1999, with columns and articles appearing in ACResolution, Consensus, Dispute Resolution Magazine, and Peace Review. He holds a master's degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in conflict resolution and technology, a B.A. in peace studies from Haverford College, and he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Eritrea from 1995-1997.

Recent articles

Press

Coming Soon: A Global ODR System

International arbitration is all over the map when it comes to resolving minor commercial disputes. Now, the United Nations Commission on International Trade La…

Blog

Novojustice

Just a quick note to say I've started a new blog as preparation for a book I'm doing for the ABA in 2012 -- so most of my blogging energy has shifted ov…

Blog

Technology and Divorce Mediation

I met with my good friend John Ford last week for lunch, and he introduced me to his business partner David Stein.  The two of them have set up a new dispute re…

Blog

Not a mythological character

Tina Dupuy: "The fact is: Obama is a good president. He’s a centrist who is somewhere between what mouth-foamers on either extreme say about him. He does l…

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A nation of know-nothings

Tim Egan on the NYT website: "It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy dem…

Blog

He still hasn't walked on water

Eugene Robinson's piece in the Washington Post today (plus Todd Purdum's recent VF piece) got me thinking.  Is it impossible for any modern President to…

Blog

Two Presentations

Video of two recent presentations of mine are now on the web, just in case you might not have been able to catch them in person. Here's a talk I did last w…