Publication: Access to Justice : The English Experience with Small Claims
Date
2000-05
ISSN
Published
2000-05
Author(s)
Baldwin, John
Abstract
The note reviews England's
experience on the potential of small claims procedures in
expanding access to justice, which allow legal redress in
situations where formal litigation would be too costly. But,
while these procedures offer access to justice, they also
illustrate the difficulties that informal dispute resolution
mechanisms can pose. Advantages of small claims procedures
reveal that most lay litigants favor informal hearings over
formal courts processes, losing parties are not required to
pay the costs of the winning parties, and, by and large,
judges seem to be willing, and able to adapt to the
informality of small claims hearings. Difficulties however
address the inadequacies of preliminary legal advice in the
absence of relevant evidence, or witnesses, as well as the
wide variations in judges' approaches, who expressed
different attitudes in the application of ordinary law in
small claims. Moreover, both the undefined role of lawyers
in informal hearings, and ineffective enforcement of
judgments remain unclear, and problematic. It is suggested
that if greater access to justice is the objective, the key
is to design a civil justice system that provides costs, and
procedures, realistically, and proportionately to the issue
in dispute.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Baldwin, John. 2000. Access to Justice : The English Experience with Small Claims. PREM Notes; No. 40. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/11433 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”