Case report
Review: Alan Uzelac (ed.), Goals of Civil Justice and Civil Procedure in Contemporary Judicial Systems, Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice 34, Springer, 2014, 263 pp., ISBN 978-3-319-03442-3
Marko Bratković
; Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Demands of contemporary lifestyle, fraught with many changes, leave little time for rethinking one's own goals. In this respect, civil justice and civil procedure are no exception. Civil justice systems around the world are troubled with the same efficiency problem – how to balance thoroughness with timeliness and low costs. Frequent law changes bring into question their appropriateness. Moreover, the haphazard solutions hardly ever contribute to efficiency in coping with growing caseloads and quality demands. Along these lines, Alan Uzelac, the editor of the recently published book Goals of Civil Justice and Civil Procedure in Contemporary Judicial Systems, makes the following remark: “A thorough discussion or even a full reconceptualization of the goals of civil justice may be a precondition for successful procedural reforms – especially if it is desired that such reforms be deep, far-reaching and effective.” The book at hand offers convincing lines of reasoning in that regard.
The structure of the book may be described as biaxial. The lines of reasoning follow two axes – the geographical and the topical. While the geographical axis connects a well chosen array of major legal traditions ranging from civil to common-law jurisdictions, from Europe and Asia to the North and South Americas, the topical axis is slightly more complex and addresses a set of fundamental questions about the goals of civil justice. Geographical, cultural and ideological diversity along the geographical axis could be an obstacle to discerning the goals of civil justice and civil procedure. Nevertheless, the book is rather successful in that respect owing to the deftly drawn up questionnaire on goals of civil justice previously distributed to the authors by the editor. The topical axis, therefore, follows the structure of the questionnaire for the most part. The diverging goals in various justice systems are found at the junctions of the two axes. In addressing the goals of civil justice, thirteen knowledgeable authors (chiefly scholars) – prompted by the questionnaire – outline the functioning and efficiency of their respective civil justice systems. The scope of the book is thus not limited to the closed perspective of national law and doctrine. It covers Germanic and Romance countries, Scandinavia, Russia, North and South America, China and ex-Socialist countries.
The book, in fact, represents volume 34 of Springer`s series Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice. Formally, the book is divided into two parts – General Synthesis and National Perspectives. The first part consists of the editor`s very coherent synthetic study on the main ideas of the book entitled Goals of Civil Justice and Civil Procedure in the Contemporary World. Global Developments – Towards Harmonisation (and Back). The second part is organised into eleven chapters containing national reports on the goals of civil justice and civil procedure based on the said questionnaire. Thirteen authors (two chapters are co-authored) have rather diverse approaches to the flagged issues and questions. However, the similarities and contrasts between them are insightfully highlighted in the editor`s introductory study.
Keywords
civil procedure; civil justice; comparative law
Hrčak ID:
123107
URI
Publication date:
30.4.2014.
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