Actes de la conférence LVI04 Law via the Internet Conference, Paris nov. 2004
 

Digital Content in Civil Court Proceedings - A Proposed Framework of Regulation with a View to Promoting Access to Justice

The 5 November 2004, by Barry Kwok Hung Lee,

Mr. Barry Kwok Hung LEE, Senior Judiciary Executive, IT Management Unit of the Hong Kong Judiciary Administration, University of Hong Kong - China

The Hong Kong Civil Justice System faces challenges of high costs, delay and complex procedure and these problems pose obstacle to access to justice. Cornerstones for access to justice include lawyers, free dissemination of law and the judiciary. Now, lawyers are not practically accessible to all individuals in the society owing to structural failure of the legal system. Law develops its complexity with the society; nonetheless, dissemination technology of law is not as developed as sufficiently to satisfy demands of the society. The court is in a limbo in which impartiality and fairness to all parties constrain its role to assist unrepresented litigants.

Disruptive legal information technology and emerging Electronic Legal Information (ELI) may arise as the 4^th cornerstone in face of the challengs. Electronic Legal Information (ELI) refers to (i) an integrated Electronic Law governing civil procedures and other areas of substantive law, (ii) electronic legal document filings and evidence and (iii) electronic court case status information. ELI is transforming the existing cornerstones to their virtual existences, which take on new capability to face the challenges of high costs, delay and complexity.

To promote access to civil justice, disruptive legal information technology should be adopted and a positive right to access ELI be established. For unrepresented litigants, the use of ELI will put them in a better position to assess if legal assistance should be sought or it would be better to remain unrepresented. Should they choose to be unrepresented, ELI provides ease of reference to law and integrates law from their perspective. For represented litigants, they will have a greater access to information concerning activity of court proceedings and they will be in a better position to push progress with the availability of case status information and electronic court document filings.

Court should not be obstructed by the fair to all prejudice in its efforts to provide ELI for parties to the proceedings. Court should also provide and maintain options of court services for those who have difficulty in using ELI.

To prevent misuse of ELI, court should formulate an access policy. Secure authentication procedures, which will only grant access to authorized users only, and audit procedures, which can trace accountability of misuse, should be established. The ELI (Digital Content) protection technology should be adopted to avoid the risk of intentional or accidental disclosure of information to the non-parties of the proceedings. Access agreement should be used to limit use purposes.

 

Documents joined to the article

Document
PDF | 452.7 kb | document published on 4 November 2004
 

In the same section

Comparing Methods from France/Germany/Great Britain/the United States of Putting Case Law On-Line
A New Way of Releasing Law: The Internet as an Instrument of Justice
The JuriBurkina Project : Putting Judicial Decisions from Burkina Faso On-Line
Digital Content in Civil Court Proceedings - A Proposed Framework of Regulation with a View to Promoting Access to Justice
Automatisation of the caselaw publication on CanLII: present and future
Anonymization of case law public databases, the CNIL recommandations
Case Law Dissemination on the Internet and Identity Protection; The NOME Anonymization Assistant
European Countries and the European Union: Case Law Dissemination Policies and their Limits Due to Applicable Sensitive Personal Data Rules
The Dissemination of Case Law in South America: The Rules of Heredia
Moderation of the technical half-day : The Storage of Juridical Data in Electronic Format
Presidency of the second day of the main session : Case Law and Doctrines - regulations of the access on line
Moderation of the Session 1: Access to Case Law and its On-Line Dissemination
Moderation of the Session 2: The Protection of Personal Data (Anonymization)
Summary of the November 3rd Half-Day about The Conservation of Juridical Data in Electronic Format
Présidency of the Second Round Table: The Juridical Internet: New Means, News Inequalities
Moderation of the Second Round Table: The Juridical Internet: New Means, News Inequalities
Second Round Table: The Juridical Internet: New Means, News Inequalities. Mr Toni ISSA
Second Round Table: The Juridical Internet: New Means, News Inequalities. Maître Enrique J. Batalla
Second Round Table: The Juridical Internet: New Means, News Inequalities. Mr David MERKIN
Second Round Table: The Juridical Internet: New Means, News Inequalities. Ms Mélanie DULONG de ROSNAY
Second Round Table: The Juridical Internet: New Means, News Inequalities. Mrs Michele COME
Second Round Table: The Juridical Internet: New Means, News Inequalities. Mr Nick MOLE
Second Round Table: The Juridical Internet: New Means, News Inequalities. Mr Lionel THOUMYRE
Awarding of the ADIJ Prize
The Paris Conclusions
Conference Closing
 

In connection with this article

Imprimer cet article
Last update on :
18 November 2004
Statistics of the article :
77 visitors today
89816 cumulated visitors
All the versions of this article:
français

 
 
SPIP 1.9.1 | BliP 2.2 | XHTML 1.0 | CSS 2.0 | RSS 2.0 | Private area
Visitors per day (office plurality) : 8160 (11968727)