PANEL dedicated to the issues underlying the ODR e-Justice project in Conference

The Role of Courts and Access to Justice in a Digital Era
organised by Institutions for Conflict Resolution group, the Digital Legal Studies group and the Interdisciplinary Hub on Privacy, Security and Data Governance (iHub) at Radbour University

Distribution of competencies between online courts and ADR/ODR bodies

• ‘Access to justice and ADR/ODR bodies versus online courts’ – Prof. Barbara Warwas, The Hague Institute of Applied Sciences
• ‘The role of AI assisted negotiation in the area of ADR/ODR’ – Prof. Davide Rua Carneiro, Politécnico do Porto
• ‘New ethical principles of the future online justice?’ – Prof. Michal Araszkiewicz, Jagiellonian University Krakow
• ‘Future cooperation (rather than competition) between ADR/ODR institutions and online court’ Dr. Zbynek Loebl, PRK Partners Prague and Prof. Dr. Federica Casarosa, Centre for Judicial Cooperation, European University Institute
• Moderator: Prof. Dr. Federica Casarosa, Centre for Judicial Cooperation, European University Institute

What is the difference between online dispute resolution (“ODR”) and state online courts? If we take a view based purely on procedures, we get an exciting picture at the moment.
Only a few years ago ODR mechanisms were considered to be the same as a sub-species of ADR ‚but on Internet‘ and thus a different animal from state courts. However, such a view has become obsolete in the recent years. The first successful online civil courts have been implementing the same range of ODR processes as the best private ODR platforms, including direct negotiation; assisted negotiation; elevation to a judge rendering a decision; and monitoring and encouraging speedy enforcement of resolutions.
As examples of such best current practices, we find the Civil Resolution Tribunal in Canada or Singapore state online civil courts or the UK Traffic Penalty Tribunal. Their look and feel is the same of the best private ODR platforms. At the same time other successful online courts (e.g. in Danemark) have so far not included ODR processes in their online court systems.
The recent developments see the successful state online courts and private ODR bodies try to build end-to-end online processes with limited opt-out rights in justified situations. The reason is obvious – only end-to-end online processes enable the realization of substantially positive changes for the parties; moreover, they are cheaper than more traditional paper-based or hybrid courts. In addition, the first few online courts have implemented the necessary digital architecture for developing data-driven processes, including machine learning processes.
This leaves us with the questions what will happen in the next 5-10 years? AI is going to bring additional significant changes to e-justice, both in terms of technology and processes.

See event details here