Successful two-day conference on ‘Pathways to civil justice in Europe’
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
Conference_Programme_2023_(1).pdf (euciviljustice.eu)
Published: November 22, 2018
On 19-20 November 2018, the Challenge Accepted! Exploring Pathways to Civil Justice in Europe was held at the Erasmus School of Law. It was the second big event within our ERC consolidator project ‘Building EU Civil Justice’. With keynotes from Ruth de Bock (AG Supreme Court, NL) and Judith Resnik (Yale Law School, USA) and 4 panels with a total 17 speakers from the Netherlands, UK, Italy, Canada, France, Germany and Belgium (see the seminar flyer) the conference covered many issues surrounding civil justice innovations, including specialization of courts and judges, self-representation and the future of lawyers, the transformation of civil justice through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the practice of ADR/ODR schemes in different European countries.
With the broad variety of panelists as well as participants the conference managed to capture current and future issues in the ongoing transformation of civil justice around the world. With the conundrum of the ethical use of AI in adjudication, the general reduction in subsidized legal aid and the changing and often diminishing role for lawyers, the seemingly ever-expanding options for out-of-court and online dispute resolution schemes as well as current establishments of specialized international business courts, the discussions during the conference made clear just how timely questions about the current and future state of civil justice are.
Approximately 100 participants, including judges, practicing lawyers, academics, policy makers and business representatives, actively took part in the discussions. These discussions continued during the drinks and lunch where four selected PhD candidates presented their poster on a topic relating to civil justice issues.
Papers authored by the speakers and panelists will be published in an edited volume in 2019.
The seminar was organized by Erasmus School of Law (ERC project ‘Building EU Civil Justice’) of Erasmus University Rotterdam, with funding from the European Research Council.