eAccess to Justice

Description

Part I of this work focuses on the ways in which digitization projects can affect fundamental justice principles. It examines claims that technology will improve justice system efficiency and offers a model for evaluating e-justice systems that incorporates a broader range of justice system values. The emphasis is on the complicated relationship between privacy and transparency in making court records and decisions available online.

Part II examines the implementation of technologies in the justice system and the challenges it comes with, focusing on four different technologies: online court information systems, e-filing, videoconferencing, and tablets for presentation and review of evidence by jurors. The authors share a measuring enthusiasm for technological advances in the courts, emphasizing that these technologies should be implemented with care to ensure the best possible outcome for access to a fair and effective justice system.

Finally, Part III adopts the standpoints of sociology, political theory and legal theory to explore the complex web of values, norms, and practices that support our systems of justice, the reasons for their well-established resistance to change, and the avenues and prospects of eAccess. The chapters in this section provide a unique and valuable framework for thinking with the required sophistication about legal change.

Sujets

• Droit et juridique
• Law
• Media

Informations

• Publié par: University of Ottawa Press
• Date de parution: 22 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9780776624310
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

The University of Ottawa Press gratefully acknowledges the support extended to its publishing list by Canadian Heritage through the Canada Book Fund, by the Canada Council for the Arts, by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program and by the University of Ottawa.
Copy editing: Interscript
Proofreading: Robbie McCaw
Typesetting: Interscript
Cover design: Édiscript enr. and Elizabeth Schwaiger. With thanks to the Cyberjustice Laboratory at the University of Montreal for permission to use the logo.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
eAccess to justice / edited by Karim Benyekhlef, Jane Bailey, Jacquelyn Burkell, and Fabien G linas.
(Law, technology and media)
Includes bibliographical references.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-0-7766-2429-7 (paperback).--ISBN 978-0-7766-2430-3 (pdf).--ISBN 978-0-7766-2431-0 (epub).--ISBN 978-0-7766-2432-7 (mobi)
1. Justice, Administration of--Automation. 2. Court administration--Automation. 3. Conduct of court proceedings--Technological innovations. I. Burkell, Jacquelyn, author, editor II. G linas, Fabien, 1966-, author, editor III. Benyekhlef, Karim, 1962-, editor IV. Bailey, Jane, 1965-, author, editor V. Series: Law, technology and media
K2100.E22 2016
347.00285
C2016-906247-3
C2016-906248-1
@ Karim Benyekhlef, Jane Bailey, Jacquelyn Burkell, and Fabien G linas, 2016, under Creative Commons License Attribution - Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) http://creative-commons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Printed in Canada
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Karim Benyekhlef
Part I: Justice Values and Digitalization
Introduction: Fundamental Values in a Technologized Age of Efficiency
Jane Bailey
I
Cyberjustice and International Development: Reducing the Gap Between Promises and Accomplishments
Renaud Beauchard
II
Evaluating e-Justice: The Design of an Assessment Framework for e-Justice Systems
Giampiero Lupo
III
The Role of Courts in Assisting Individuals in Realizing Their s. 2(b) Right to Information about Court Proceedings
Graham Reynolds
IV
Privacy v. Transparency: How Remote Access to Court Records Forces Us to Re-examine Our Fundamental Values
Nicolas Vermeys
Part II: Courtroom Interactions And Self-Empowerment
Introduction: Troubling the Technological Imperative: Views on Responsible Implementation of Court Technologies
Jacquelyn Burkell
V
ATJ Technology Principles: Access to and Delivery of Justice
Donald J Horowitz
VI
Empowerment, Technology, and Family Law
Sherry MacLennan
VII
The Case for Courtroom Technology Competence as an Ethical Duty for Litigators
Amy Salyzyn
VIII
Tablets in the Jury Room: Enhancing Performance while Undermining Fairness?
David Tait and Meredith Rossner
Part III: Toward New Procedural Models?
Introduction: Continuity and Technological Change in Justice Delivery
Fabien G linas
IX
The Old and the New? Elements for a General Theory of Institutional Change: The Case of Paperless Justice
Pierre Noreau
X
Cyberjustice and Ethical Perspectives of Procedural Law
Daniel Weinstock
XI
Three Trade-Offs to Efficient Dispute Resolution
Cl ment Camion
XII
The Electronic Process in the Brazilian Judicial System: Much More Than an Option; It Is a Solution
Katia Balbino de Carvalho Ferreira
XIII
Access to Justice and Technology: Transforming the Face of Cross-Border Civil Litigation and Adjudication in the EU
Xandra E Kramer
Postscript: eAccess to Justice - Brief Observations
Guy Canivet
Bibliography
Contributors
Acknowledgements
The publication of this book was made possible by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada s (SSHRC) support of Re-thinking Processual Law: Towards Cyberjustice , a 7-year research initiative (2011-2018) funded through the Major Collaborative Research Initiatives (MCRI) program. The MCRI program s objective was to support cutting-edge research with potential for intellectual breakthrough that addresses broad and critical issues of intellectual, social, economic, and cultural significance. Thanks to this important funding, the Towards Cyberjustice project has initiated numerous knowledge mobilization activities, including this book and the international, intersectoral, and interdisciplinary conference that preceded it. Aspects of the publication also benefited from the support of the Fonds de recherche du Qu bec Soci t et Culture through a cluster grant to the Regroupement strat gique Droit, changements et gouvernance and a team grant to the McGill Private Justice and the Rule of Law Research Group.
Introduction

Karim Benyekhlef
T he significant expansion of digital technologies over recent years has rendered them ubiquitous. They have been integrated into numerous domains throughout society, and the justice sector is no exception. This incorporation of modern technologies into the justice system has led to the emergence of a new and innovative field referred to as cyberjustice. This term encompasses both the integration of information and communication technologies into judicial and extrajudicial dispute resolution processes and the digital networking of all stakeholders involved in judicial cases. Conceived in this manner, the primary aim of cyberjustice is to use modern technologies to aid in the administration of justice such as to allow for the conceptualization of a more efficient method of achieving justice for litigants, thus ultimately reducing the abounding access to justice issues with which the legal system is plagued.
In this light, we will begin by (1) presenting the Towards Cyberjustice project, which was created in the hopes of achieving this very purpose and upon which this book is based. We will then proceed by (2) outlining the main research perspectives that underlie the research conducted in association with this project. Finally, we will conclude by (3) offering insight on what lies ahead in terms of the development of cyberjustice.
Towards Cyberjustice : A Multidisciplinary Research Project
In an effort to advance toward achieving this goal, the Cyberjustice Laboratory, supported by a multidisciplinary group of 36 international researchers and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, launched a 7-year research project in 2011: Towards Cyberjustice . 1 The project s main hypothesis was that information and communication technologies could significantly contribute to improving traditional legal processes as well as entirely modifying the conventional structure of trials. In this light, the research conducted was aimed at identifying and developing concrete solutions that could optimize traditional legal processes and ultimately enhance the administration of justice as a whole, such that efficiency would be increased, costs and delays would be reduced, and mechanisms would be simplified.
While many attempts have been made toward achieving this goal throughout the legal world, as will be discussed in more detail below, the project s novelty and success lies in two unique factors. To begin with, it conducts socio-legal studies regarding both the impacts of technology on law and the identification of rituals and practices that hinder the networking of the justice system. Additionally, through techno-legal studies funded mainly by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation , it simultaneously develops open-source software solutions that are adapted to judicial and extrajudicial contexts and can be tailored to the varying needs of each individual justice system. This cross-fertilization of socio-legal and techno-legal studies not only allows for the development of technological tools tailored to the justice system, but also makes it possible to substantially re-examine the judicial process in a manner that is primarily designed to improve access to justice.
These various studies that emerged from the Towards Cyberjustice project were conducted by an elaborate team of international researchers from twenty universities worldwide, separated into three working groups, each of which was dedicated to examining a differing and particular aspect of the research in question. The first working group, whose research will be discussed in further detail in the first part of this collection, considered (a) the digitalization of justice and its interaction with the values inherent in the justice system. The second working group, whose aim was to identify (b) the limits of digitalization, will be examined in the second part of the collection through an in-depth analysis of both courtroom interactions and self-empowerment. Finally, the third working group was dedicated to (c) identifying new procedural models, which will be considered in detail in the third and final part of the collection.
Digitalization of Justice
The objective of the first working group was to identify the manner in which the digitalization of justice can increase the efficiency of the legal system and facilitate access to judicial processes. The main hypothesis and departure point was therefore that access to justice could be improved by implementing concrete technological tools such as electronic filing, electronic case-management systems as well as the management of a paperless system, and finally, technological courtroom management, which includes the use of videoconferencing for remote testimony.
In this vein, and as discussed in more dep