E-Justice

A 1999 Australian report on the prospective impact of information and communications technology on the justice system presented a vision of how technology might result in a new paradigm of ‘e-justice.’ Since that report was written, Australian courts have had nearly two decades of experience of the introduction of new technologies. This chapter discusses the experience of e-justice in Australia to date and argues that it still has some way to go to achieve the goals set out in the 1999 report. It suggests that, to date, the implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) in courts has largely concentrated on enhancing traditional methods of delivering justice. The innovative potential of technology is something that courts are still coming to terms with. In particular, courts have been slow to embrace the possibilities for the delivery of new kinds of services that will transform the nature of their relationship with users.

The E-Court Roadmap

This chapter tracks the response of Australian courts to rapid advances in ICT. It shows how, despite early resistance and a reactive approach to technology, Australian courts have been transformed by the challenges of implementing ICT. It illustrates with case studies the way Australian courts have drawn on each experience to improve their processes, and have come to lead the world in using practice notes and protocols as a control measure for procedural change. It reviews current experiences in Australian jurisdictions, presenting courts who now see ICT as a tool for managing workflows throughout their organisation. The authors foresee the challenge for Australian courts will be keeping this control, and contend that courts who achieve this are more likely to have ICT as the servant, not the master, of the justice process. They anticipate that Australia’s success can be seen as a paradigm for other courts facing similar challenges

Italian Justice System and ICT

The Italian judiciary is characterised by a weak system of governance, consequence of institutional and cultural factors. In this framework, the deployment of ICT policies has been mainly conceived as tools to improve the management, the operational efficiency, and the consistent application of rules so to strength the governance of the system. This approach to the ICT can easily be conceived as an attempt that aims to tightly couple the elements of a system that is by nature (constitutionally defined) loose coupled. In this framework, technology has been considered as, if not the instrument to govern, strengthening the liaisons in the organisation, judicial offices, where other “traditional” tools have failed due to institutional and constitutional constraints. Matching and mismatching between institutional and technological constraints are analysed, providing a framework to discusses how these policies have been deployed and the consequence that the nature of the organizational liaisons is playing while the deployment of information systems is concerned.

Digital Government and Criminal Justice

This chapter outlines the history of digital government in criminal justice, starting with the Johnson Administration’s findings concerning automation in its report, “The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society,” the development of the national criminal justice network, and the creation of SEARCH Group, a consortium of states that led the effort to create computerized criminal histories of individual offenders. A brief discussion of the issues these efforts attempted to solve will be developed. The narrative will describe how these initial activities created the basic parameters for all subsequent developments in the area of criminal justice automation. Several major problems and controversies of criminal justice automation will be described and placed in their historical context. Examples of criminal justice initiatives will be provided and their success in solving some of the problems discussed will be described. The chapter concludes that it is time to rethink the older criminal justice digital government paradigm from the 1960s and create a new model more in tune with today’s developments in a highly mobile, digital and integrated society. Questions about the impact of this new model on traditional constitutional safeguards, including individual liberty and privacy will be raised.

Courts on the Web in Russia

When the Internet reached Russia in the mid- 1990s, Russian judicial chiefs actively embraced the idea of having a solid presence of national judiciary on the Web. To judges, having court Web sites would improve public awarenessabout Russian courts and relieve overloaded court clerks from answering mundane questions about the location of courthouses, hours of work, schedule of hearings, court forms, and so on. However, the chronic underfinancing of Russian courts in the 1990s and the decentralized nature of the Russian judiciary made the creation and the maintenance of the lower courts’ Web sites much more sporadic. Improving public awareness about Russian courts is a priority for Russian judges, who increasingly issue impartial decisions yet atthe same time face growing public skepticism about judicial performance (Solomon, 2003, 2004; Trochev, 2006). As the growing number of studies of the information and communication technologies (ICT) in courthouses around the world show, computerized courts can both speed up the administration of justice and strengthen public trust in the judicial system (Bueno, Ribeiro, & Hoeschl, 2003; Dalal, 2005; Fabri & Contini, 2001; Fabri & Langbroek, 2000; Fabri, Jean, Langbroek, & Pauliat, 2005; Langbroek & Fabri, 2004; Oskamp, Lodder, & Apistola, 2004; Valentini, 2003; Malik, 2002). Indeed, as the recent research demonstrates, those who know something about the courts: either about court procedures or about court-ordered public policies, tend to trust the judiciary and to comply with court decisions (Baird, 2001; Gibson, Caldeira., & Baird, 1998; Kritzer & Voelker, 1998; Tyler & Mitchell, 1994; Tyler, Boeckmann, Smith, & Huo, 1997). This article focuses on the Web sites of Russian courts as the virtual gateways in the world of judicial administration (Trochev, 2002) and discusses challenges of adapting Russian court Web sites to the needs of various users of judicial system: judges themselves, law-enforcement agencies, actual litigants, general public and scholars (Toharia, 2003).

The Belgian Case

This chapter examines the ambitious Phenix project, a global project for the whole computerization of all Courts and Tribunals in Belgium, with the use of ICT by all stakeholders. It focuses especially on the legislative measures that have been taken, mainly in relation to data protection and legal value of the documents generated by the use of the electronic procedure.

Online Dispute Resolution

Every community—whether physical or virtual will inevitably experience conflict. New ways of interacting through information and communication technology has led to new conflicts, such as domain name or e-commerce disputes. At the same time, governments need to deal with the entire range of disputes in society, whether crimes, neighborhood disputes, ethnic conflict, or disputes with its own employees. A key role for government and for e-governance is providing mechanisms to help resolve these disputes. The emerging area of online dispute resolution (ODR) potentially offers a useful set of tools and techniques for resolving disputes. Capable of being used for both online and offline disputes, ODR has already proved that it can provide effective resolution for at least some disputes: more than 1.5 million cases had been successfully resolved online to July 2004 (Conley Tyler, 2005). Governments and e-governance institutions around the world are adopting or considering the applicability of ODR as a tool for digital government.

The Potential of Computerized Court Case Management to Battle Judicial Corruption

Automated court case management systems present opportunities to develop processes and procedures that can battle corruption. This chapter provides information on the development of such a system for the nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and looks toward future potential developments in this area. Computerized court case management systems (CCMS) can be used to help the judiciary manage complete their daily work. These systems can also be used to prevent data corruption and allow data “mining,” that identifies potential corruption activities. This chapter briefly discusses the issue of judicial corruption and describes automated system functions that can be used to eliminate and potentially indicate corrupt practices.

E-Justice in Spain

Administration of justice is adding information and communication technologies in its internal operations and its relations both with judicial operators and citizens in Spain. The chapter describes the Spanish institutional framework characterized by the plurality of actors with competences in the administration of justice and the lack of mechanisms of coordination among them. Then, it sets out the different applications of ICTs within administration of justice, classified into four categories: treatment of information, management of judicial files, relations between judicial operators, and decision making. The analysis of such applications focuses on Spanish administration of justice. The chapter finally shows the impact of Spanish institutional framework of justice in the development of e-justice.

The Italian Style of E-Justice in a Comparative Perspective

The European Union (EU) is an extraordinary laboratory of innovation and change, particularly in the justice sector. The diversity of environments within Europe provides contrasting examples of the use of technology to support the administration of justice. This chapter presents some of the findings of ongoing research on e-government in judicial administration, which has been carried on by the Research Institute on Judicial Systems of the National Research Council in Bologna, Italy. More in detail, the chapter considers the Italian case in a comparative perspective. It illustrates the great diversity of ways in which EU members are harnessing information and communication technology (ICT) to support the operation of their legal systems, and it identifies different strategies as well as tools developed. Finally, it detects some critical issues and trends in Italy in comparison with the challenges addressed by other countries.