"Fitting the forum to the fuss," i.e., finding an optimal way to deal with every dispute, is an appealing slogan of proponents of alternative dispute resolution. It also summarizes the contract one would expect rational disputants to make, once they are embroiled in a conflict they cannot...

Facilitadores Judiciales is a programme run by the Organization of the American States and the Nicaraguan judiciary. The main objective of the programme is to improve access to justice for the disadvantaged people in Nicaragua. From 1998 to 2010 the programme was implemented in almost all rural...

In this paper, we explore what may trigger successful innovation in mechanisms providing accountability before third parties. It discusses factors that foster innovation within the public sector according to two literature reviews that are often cited. These data are linked to key findings from...

Efforts to measure the rule of law trigger a process of clarifying how the rule of law impacts people's lives. Accountability emerges as a key element of the rule of law. Nowadays, accountability is created through courts and by countless other forums, including the court of public opinion....

In 'Delivering Justice: Programme of Action to Strengthen the Rule of Law at the National and International Levels', the Secretary-General of the United Nations, argued that the rule of law involves more than the state and its institutions: it “is at the heart of the social contract between...

This report investigates how governments fund justice and then proceeds to the financial models behind the justice services upon which many people depend: courts, informal justice, services by lawyers and other legal services.We find that justice services struggle to serve people seeking access...

In this essay, we begin with some general observations on the state of access to justice. Because access to justice is hard to measure and data on such access are scarce, we give a description of the barrieres to justice and mechanisms of exclusion and analyze how these work out for the poor in...

Many countries struggle to maintain an affordable and sustainable legal aid system. This paper describes an interactive consultation process that was organized to develop proposals for increasing access to justice while limiting costs for governments as well as for users of the legal system....

This paper integrates findings from legal needs studies, institutional economics, and interdisciplinary conflict research to develop a framework for analyzing dispute systems. Five essential tasks that a dispute system facilitates are identified and the basic technologies for supplying them....