What can the Star Wars saga teach us about conflict resolution? More than you might expect, says Oregon Law professor and associate dean Jen Reynolds.

This past December, Reynolds published Star Wars and Conflict Resolution with her co-editor, Professor Noam Ebner of Creighton University. Reynolds and Ebner worked with more than two dozen experts from academia and practice on the book, which addresses such diverse topics as why Anakin turned to the dark side (and back again); whether Poe’s mutiny against Holdo was justified; and how arbitration might work in the Mos Eisley cantina.

“Sometimes it makes sense to outsource dispute resolution to lawyers and the legal system, or to mediators and other conflict professionals,” Reynolds said. “But we still must learn to understand and handle conflict well ourselves.”