Science explains the benefits of aging generally, and perhaps the benefit of aging for mediation in particular

"At twenty years of age the will reigns;

at thirty the wit; at forty the judgement."

-- Benjamin Franklin

At one point, all human cultures accepted a correlation between age and wisdom. In Republican Rome, for example, the first to speak in any Senate debate was the princeps senatus, the most senior senator, drawn from the ranks of the patrician consulares; only after he spoke could the rest of the consulares, that is, those who had held been elected consul (and no one could be elected counsel before 'his own year' -- 42 for plebeians, 40 for patricians) provide their opinions.

Then, in America, came the Baby Boomers -- and they proclaimed that no one over 30 could be trusted. That was, of course, before the Baby Boomers began turning 30. Now the Boomer generation orbits somewhere around 60 -- and, not surprisingly, science has been deputized to discover why gray hair should now be considered a good thing.

An article by Helen Fields on Smithsonian.com, "What is So Good About Growing Old," says that researchers are discovering that there are real advantages to aging.

"In a University of Illinois study," for example, Fields writes, "older air traffic controllers excelled at their cognitively taxing jobs, despite some losses in short-term memory and visual spatial processing. How so? They were expert at navigating, juggling multiple aircraft simultaneously and avoiding collisions."

As we age, apparently, we become better at conflict resolution as well:

For a 2010 study, researchers at the University of Michigan presented “Dear Abby” letters to 200 people and asked what advice they would give. Subjects in their 60s were better than younger ones at imagining different points of view, thinking of multiple resolutions and suggesting compromises.

The current research on aging provides a scientific explanation for the increasing importance of mediation in resolving civil disputes.

The trial of a lawsuit is a win or lose, 1 or 0, hit or miss proposition. Mediation, however, under the direction of one sufficiently trained and experienced, can provide the compromises or "multiple resolutions" that can send all parties to a dispute home satisfied (if not exactly happy).

Judicial service is not an essential prerequisite of the successful mediator. Judicial service is merely one kind of experience that a good mediator can draw upon in helping to facilitate the resolution of civil disputes. In a lot of cases, judicial service may be very relevant experience on which to draw and, thus, many ex-judges have become quite successful mediators. But it is the wealth and variety of experience, judicial or otherwise, that the mediator brings to the process that enhances the prospects for success: It is the mediator's age, and the wisdom that experience has provided, that is important, not whether there is an old robe hanging in the mediator's closet.