Turning Agreement into Judgment: Settlement, Conciliation, and Enforceable Promises

Abstract

This volume asks when the fact of an agreement acquires an effect equivalent to that of a final and conclusive judgment. Negotiated wording, an established conciliation, and a recommended decision that has become final differ in the conditions under which their effect arises. The specificity of the agreed terms and the routes of establishment, service, and objection must be considered together. The path to relief opens where the agreement is entered in a court record, or satisfies the grounds on which a recommended or substitute decision takes effect, and the subject of performance is specified, and closes where it remains a private promise, or where a lawful objection has been raised against a recommended or substitute decision so that relief based on the final effect of that decision cannot be obtained. The six sections address, in turn, when an agreement enters the record, the point at which conciliation is established, the distance between recommendation and finality, conciliation decisions without agreement, the enforceable content of a promise, and the difference between termination and recovery. The strongest counterargument is as follows. The advantages of a swift agreement may be lost to the burdens of formality and of periods for challenge. Negotiation strategy, management of concessions, and the administration of terminating long-running disputes are not addressed in this volume.