Successful seminar Innovating International Business Courts
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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: July 12, 2018
On 10 July 2018, the seminar Innovating International Business Courts: A European Outlook was held at the Erasmus School of Law. It was the first big event within our ERC consolidator project Building EU Civil Justice. In total five speakers and seven panellists from the Netherlands, England, France, Germany and Belgium discussed their existing and recently established international commercial courts or initiatives to establish such a court of court chamber (see the seminar flyer).
The sometimes heated debates evolved around the need to establish such courts for international business, the court design and procedural innovations, using English as the court language, the challenges for the judicial system, and the (potential) competitiveness of these courts, also in view of the exit of the UK from the EU as well as the need for collaboration in Europe. Approximately 100 participants from almost twenty European and other countries (including China, South Korea, Iran, and the United States), including judges, practising lawyers, academics, policy makers and business representatives, actively took part in the discussions. These discussions continued during the drinks where four selected PhD candidates presented their poster on a topic relating to international commercial courts.
Papers authored by the speakers and a number of additional papers, selected following a call for papers, will be published in the Erasmus Law Review mid-2019. In addition, a book will be prepared for publication in 2019. Both will not only cover the recent European developments but will take a global perspective.
The seminar was organised by Erasmus School of Law (ERC project ‘Building EU Civil Justice’) of Erasmus University Rotterdam, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Procedural Law Luxembourg, and the Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Judicial Administration (Utrecht University).