A Sale of Land in Somerset County

At the heart of negotiation teaching lies the implicit notion that the typical negotiation course offered in schools of law and business, as well as in such departments as international relations and planning, offers enough basic information about negotiation for students to at least begin their careers. Beyond this, our concept of a negotiation curriculum includes a myriad of topics and courses that add up to “advanced” negotiation. The implication — perhaps an insufficiently examined one — is that these advanced topics can safely be left to those students who are bent, someday, on negotiating, say, major corporate transactions, multiparty environmental disputes, or an international arms reduction deal. But what if it is not so? Do “basic” negotiation courses actually teach students to understand even a “basic” negotiation? In the last few years, we have moved some way toward defining the essentials of a “canon” of negotiation. The list of important topics now recognized as crossing disciplinary boundaries, as of the date of this writing, is far larger than it was as recently as three years ago. If we stuck to our existing concepts of how this field is taught, these would logically be added at the “advanced” levels. However, if the varieties of knowledge and skill being newly identified as important across many fields and types of setting do not operate only at an advanced level, but turn out to be implicated even in seemingly simple everyday transactions, then our