Athens-Clarke County judge receives dispute resolution award

ATLANTA — The Supreme Court of Georgia Commission on Dispute Resolution and the Dispute Resolution Section of the State Bar of Georgia have awarded the 2022 Chief Justice Harold G. Clarke Award to Charles E. Auslander III in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of alternative dispute resolution in Georgia.

Auslander accepted the award at the recent 29th annual Alternative Dispute Resolution Institute held at the Georgia Tech Conference Center in Atlanta. Upon receiving the award, he expressed his appreciation to the current and former directors of the Georgia Office of Dispute Resolution as well as to the award’s nominating committee members.

“Dispute resolution professionals provide the opportunity for better access to justice, they protect our litigants’ rights, and they give our litigants the opportunity to be heard,” Auslander said while accepting the award. “Most importantly, the litigants get the opportunity to have a good, fair resolution of their disputes in a much more cost-efficient manner than the very stressful and traumatic experience of going through a litigated courtroom or contested matter.”

Auslander, a proud “Double Dawg,” has served Athens-Clarke County as a judge of 20 years and as an active member of his community. He served in the Magistrate Court from 2002-2011 and in the State Court since 2011. He has been a leader in promoting alternative dispute resolution in civil cases. In 2006, the Supreme Court of Georgia selected him to serve the Georgia Commission on Dispute Resolution as a member and, further, as its chair from 2012 to 2019.

During his tenure as GCDR chair, Auslander oversaw several pivotal initiatives, including indispensable multigroup collaborations: an ongoing partnership with the Georgia Commission on Family Violence first intended to update and implement policy regarding the use of mediation in cases involving issues of domestic violence; the efforts to, with the Atlanta International Arbitration Society and the State Bar of Georgia Dispute Resolution Section (and others), introduce and enact the Georgia Uniform Mediation Act; the modernizing of strategic plans, which focused on delivering improvements to court programs and mediators and was designed to expand access to mediation in an increasing number of courts; and the hiring of GODR Executive Director Tracy B. Johnson and Deputy Director Karlie A. Sahs.