Rebooting Justice

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.

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.

Through a set of vibrant case studies, this collection investigates rebooting as a practice that seeks to remake an entire film series or franchise, with ambitions that are at once respectful and revisionary.

Exploring how justice is delivered at a time of rapid technological transformation, Justice in the Digital State exposes urgent issues surrounding the modernization of courts and tribunals whilst re-examining the effects on technology on established systems. Case studies investigate the rise of crowdfunded judicial reviews, the increasing use of data in justice system design, the digitalisation of tribunals, and the rise of ‘agile’ methodologies in building administrative justice systems. Joe Tomlinson’s cutting-edge research offers an authoritative and much-needed guide for navigating through the challenges of digital disruption. Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence.

“Attorney and literary agent Goldfarb (editor, After Snowden) delivers a lacerating critique of inequities in America’s criminal and civil justice systems and the role of lawyers in perpetuating them... Legal professionals will want to take note.” – Publisher’s Weekly With foreword by Senator Bernie Sanders Real civil and criminal Justice is long overdue InThe Price of Justice: Money, Morals and Ethical Reform in the Law veteran Washington Lawyer Ronald Goldfarb reveals the injustices in our legal system and how money and power have exceeded ethics in the legal profession for far too long. Justice reform has become an increasingly present topic in the news and media, with movements like “I Can’t Breathe” and Black Lives Matter prompting national outcry from the public over the unethical actions of law enforcement, and remains one of the most controversial and highly debated issues for politicians and citizens today. With more than 2 million American’s incarcerated, it is beyond apparent that the justice system intrinsically ensures that lower-income people and minorities are shockingly under represented and offered little to no legal protection. In The Price of Justice, Goldfarb offers powerful testimonies, media evidence, and first-hand expertise from working in the Justice Department as a longtime public interest lawyer to reveal how both the criminal and civil justice systems fail to serve lower and middle-class citizens, and makes an undeniable case for the profound justice reform that is so desperately needed. Goldfarb asks that we examine closely a legal system that has become largely pay-to-play, benefiting the administrators and those wealthy citizens who can afford to “lawyer up”, and shows little mercy for the lower-income citizens who fall victim to an endless cycle of conviction, fines, bail, lack of counsel and capital punishment. Goldfarb exposes a system that values money over ethics and lawyers who value winning cases over finding truth and serving justice, pointing out that civil aid and public defenders are grossly under-staffed and under financed, making it nearly impossible to meet the challenges of well-paid private lawyers. This book begs the legal profession to consider it’s ethical code when considering cases to represent, not just represent crooks who can pay and turn away worthy clients who cannot afford absorbent fees, and equips the public with the knowledge needed to advocate for justice reform.

This book explores the challenges of transitional justice in West Africa, specifically how countries in the region have dealt with transitional justice problems in the last 30 years (1990–2020), and how they have managed the process. Using comparative, historical, and legal analyses it examines the politics of justice after violent conflicts in West Africa, the major transitional justice mechanisms established in the region, and how countries have used these institutions to address injustice and the pains of war in some West African countries. The book examines how transitional justice mechanisms have contributed to victims’ rights, reconciliation, and peace in transitional societies, and whether transitional justice mechanisms deployed in West Africa were suitable or ill-fitted, and the politics of deploying them. The book is addressed to a wide audience: policymakers, and graduate and post-graduate students of transitional justice, conflict resolution, peace studies, conflict transformation, international criminal law, law and similar subjects. This book will be of great value to academics and researchers, as well as lecturers in tertiary institutions offering relevant courses; legal practitioners; peace practitioners/NGOs; and those working in the field of transitional justice and human rights.

New digital technologies, from AI-fired 'legal tech' tools to virtual proceedings, are transforming the legal system. But much of the debate surrounding legal tech has zoomed out to a nebulous future of 'robo-judges' and 'robo-lawyers.' This volume is an antidote. Zeroing in on the near- to medium-term, it provides a concrete, empirically minded synthesis of the impact of new digital technologies on litigation and access to justice. How far and fast can legal tech advance given regulatory, organizational, and technological constraints? How will new technologies affect lawyers and litigants, and how should procedural rules adapt? How can technology expand – or curtail – access to justice? And how must judicial administration change to promote healthy technological development and open courthouse doors for all? By engaging these essential questions, this volume helps to map the opportunities and the perils of a rapidly digitizing legal system – and provides grounded advice for a sensible path forward.

This book focuses on four topical and interconnected, innovative pathways to civil justice within the context of securing and improving access to justice: the use of Artificial Intelligence and its interactions with judicial systems; ADR and ODR tracks in privatising justice systems; the effects of increased self-representation on access to justice; and court specialization and the establishment of commercial courts to counter the trend of vanishing court trials. Top academics and experts from Europe, the US and Canada address these topics in a critical and multidisciplinary manner, combining legal, socio-legal and empirical insights. The book is part of ‘Building EU Civil Justice’, a five-year research project funded by the European Research Council. It will be of interest to scholars and policymakers, as well as practitioners working in the areas of civil justice, alternative dispute resolution, court systems, and legal tech. The chapters “Introduction: The Future of Access to Justice – Beyond Science Fiction” and “Constituting a Civil Legal System Called “Just”: Law, Money, Power, and Publicity” are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.