Conference on Covid-19 and civil justice
News
Sustaining Access to Justice in Europe: New Avenues for Costs and Funding
The team of the NWO Vici project ‘Affordable Access to Justice’ at Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University (Rotterdam), is organising the conference ‘Sustaining Access to Justice in Europe: New Avenues for Costs and Funding’ on 19 and 20 October 2023 at the Erasmus Paviljoen at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Access to civil justice is of paramount importance for enforcing citizens’ rights. At the heart of access to civil justice lies litigation funding and cost management. Yet, over the past decades, access to justice has been increasingly put under pressure due to retrenching governments, high costs of procedure, and the inefficiency of courts and justice systems. Within this context, the funding of litigation in Europe seems to be shifting from public to private sources. Private actors and innovative business models emerged to provide new solutions to the old problem of financial barriers of access to justice.
With the participation of policymakers, practitioners, academics, and civil society representatives from all over Europe and beyond, the conference seeks to delve deeper into the financial implications of access to justice and the different ways to achieve sustainable civil justice systems in Europe.
The topics addressed in this international academic conference will include the different methods of financing dispute resolution, particularly in the context of group litigation (third-party funding, crowdfunding, blockchain technologies), public interest litigation, developments in ADR/ODR, the new business models of legal professionals as well as law and economics aspects on litigation funding. The conference is supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
Find the link to registration here.
Please find the preliminary conference programme below.
Call for papers Vici Conference Sustainable justice 2023.pdf
Provisional Programme.pdf
Published: May 18, 2020
On the 15th of May, Xandra Kramer participated in an online conference dedicated to Covid-related litigation and judicial and legislative responses. The conference was organised with Catherine Piché (University of Montréal) and 18 speakers from different countries around the globe participated in this online event. Xandra discussed the closing down of the courts in the Netherlands on the 17th of March resulting from the lock-down. After this date, only urgent and written proceedings continued. A new temporary act was put in place to regulate distance hearings and other temporary measures concerning the operation of the courts and the online submission of documents. As of 11th of May, the courts re-opened, however with limitations to physical oral hearings and exclusion of the general public. She also discussed, following an interview with the president of the Rotterdam district court, how the corona crisis has led to boosting technology and innovation and a pragmatic approach of Dutch courts in this respect.