Goals of Civil Justice and Civil Procedure in Contemporary Judicial Systems

Goals of Civil Justice and Civil Procedure in Contemporary Judicial Systems
Author: Alan Uzelac
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2014-01-11
Genre: Law
ISBN: 331903443X

This book is a collection of papers that address a fundamental question: What is the role of civil justice and civil procedure in the various national traditions in the contemporary world? The book presents striking differences among a range of countries and legal traditions, but also points to common trends and open issues. It brings together prominent experts, professionals and scholars from both civil and common law jurisdictions. It represents all main legal traditions ranging from Europe (Germanic and Romanic countries, Scandinavia, ex-Socialist countries) and Russia to the Americas (North and South) and China (Mainland and Hong Kong). While addressing the main issue – the goals of civil justice – the book discusses the most topical concerns regarding the functioning and efficiency of national systems of civil justice. These include concerns such as finding the appropriate balance between accurate fact-finding and the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time, the processing of hard cases and the function of civil justice as a specific public service. In the mosaic of contrasts and oppositions special place is devoted to the continuing battle between the individualistic/liberal approach and the collectivist/paternalistic approach – the battle in which, seemingly, paternalistic tendencies regain momentum in a number of contemporary justice systems.

Reforming Civil Procedure

Reforming Civil Procedure
Author: Dominic De Saulles
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2019-05-16
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1509925929

Drawing on political, social and economic theory, Reforming Civil Procedure focuses on the English civil justice system by looking at its history and its processes. The book considers the objectives of civil procedure and how it operates for and against particular societal groups, and what ideas and behaviours impact upon it. The reform of civil procedure has been beset with difficulties. Some are caused by questions of culture and mind-sets resistant to the changes, some by a confusion and conflict of values, some by overambitious reform efforts, some by a failure to follow through on purpose clauses, and some by swinging from laxity to rigidity with insufficient analysis. This book makes a strong contribution to the field by synthesising the work of English writers with different views, extending the work in England on the role of philosophy, values, process and culture in litigation, and engaging extensively with American writers who have not previously been the subject of much attention in English civil procedural studies.

Rebooting Justice

Rebooting Justice
Author: Benjamin H. Barton
Publisher: Encounter Books
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2017-08-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1594039348

America is a nation founded on justice and the rule of law. But our laws are too complex, and legal advice too expensive, for poor and even middle-class Americans to get help and vindicate their rights. Criminal defendants facing jail time may receive an appointed lawyer who is juggling hundreds of cases and immediately urges them to plead guilty. Civil litigants are even worse off; usually, they get no help at all navigating the maze of technical procedures and rules. The same is true of those seeking legal advice, like planning a will or negotiating an employment contract. Rebooting Justice presents a novel response to longstanding problems. The answer is to use technology and procedural innovation to simplify and change the process itself. In the civil and criminal courts where ordinary Americans appear the most, we should streamline complex procedures and assume that parties will not have a lawyer, rather than the other way around. We need a cheaper, simpler, faster justice system to control costs. We cannot untie the Gordian knot by adding more strands of rope; we need to cut it, to simplify it.

Effectiveness of Pretrial Disposition Reform

Effectiveness of Pretrial Disposition Reform
Author: Jinkyoo Lee
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre:
ISBN:

Judicial efficiency achieved by filtering cases that do not deserve trial and litigants' right to access to justice are competing values of most of civil justice systems. How these two values are interacting and how these are balancing influence actors of the system, decide effectiveness of legal institutions, and lead future civil procedure reforms. Through analysis of Korean civil litigation proceedings, existing studies, observations of court hearings, and interviews with Korean judges and lawyers, this dissertation investigates how disposition without trial and related procedural safeguards of Korean civil procedure are actually working and how interactions between efficiency and procedural fairness influence actual use of procedural mechanisms. Based on that, this dissertation evaluates comparative law projects that recommend adoption of disposition without trial of the U.S. civil procedure suggested by Korean legal scholars. This dissertation argues that fundamental procedural values in action that are unique in certain society and at certain time period decide actual use of procedural devices and effectiveness of legal reforms. It also contends that, in Korean context, maximum level of access to adjudication on the merits and truth finding function of civil litigation are driving judges' and lawyers' civil litigation practices toward minimal use of disposition without trial that limits litigants' access to court and maximum use of procedural safeguards, thus establishing a one-sided model biased with access to justice in terms of balancing model. By applying this explanatory theory to comparative civil procedure projects in Korea, this dissertation evaluates these projects in light of considering fundamental procedural values in action; and illustrates the ways of designing comparative civil procedure projects that appropriately reflects contexts of adopting society and raises effectiveness of the legal reforms.

Transformation of Civil Justice

Transformation of Civil Justice
Author: Alan Uzelac
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2018-09-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 3319973584

National civil justice systems are deeply rooted in national legal cultures and traditions. However, in the past few decades they have been increasingly influenced by integration processes at the regional, supra-national and international level. As a by-product of the emergence of economic and political unions and globalisation processes there is pressure to harmonise or even unify the way in which national civil justice systems operate. In an attempt to create a ‘genuine area of justice’, new unified procedures are being developed, which operate in parallel with national civil procedures, and sometimes even strive to replace them. As a reaction to the forces that endeavour to harmonise and unify procedural laws and practices, an opposing trend is gaining momentum: one that insists on diversity and pluralism of national civil procedures. This book focuses on the evolution of procedural reforms in various jurisdictions and the ongoing transformation of national civil justice systems.

Foundations of Civil Justice

Foundations of Civil Justice
Author: Fabien Gélinas
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2015-06-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 3319187759

This book reviews the knowledge corpus about access to civil justice across disciplines and legal traditions and proposes a new research framework for civil justice reform. This framework is intended to foster further critical analysis of the justice system in a systematic and organized way. In particular, the framework underlines the tensions between different values considered as central to the civil justice system, and in doing so potentially allows for conscious, reflected and enlightened choices about the values that are to be prioritized in the reform of justice systems.