Consideration of Civil Disputes During a Pandemic: Experience of England and Wales

Abstract

The restrictions that have arisen in a pandemic have a significant impact not only on substantive relations, but also affect the scope of dispute resolution. The resulting «procedural risks» arising from the «freezing» of court proceedings during a pandemic can be partially neutralized, for which it is necessary to use various remote mechanisms of access to justice. The author of this article researched international and interstate agreements, as well as legislation, experience of the judicial system of England and Wales, which adopted a number of procedural mechanisms for remote litigation in civil and economic disputes. The subject of work is interstate agreements and legislative and other normative legal acts of England and Wales, regulating the administration of justice in civil and economic disputes during a pandemic, the legal positions of the highest courts of England and Wales. The purpose of the work is to highlight the practical proposals of this jurisdiction for the administration of justice during the period of current restrictions, to identify the advantages and disadvantages of the analyzed experience. In the study, the following methods were used: logical methods (analysis, synthesis), formal legal method, and the study was carried out taking into account other methods of scientific knowledge. It is indicative that, despite the analysis of the experience of two independent judicial systems, a number of mechanisms proposed for implementation have common fundamental features, such as the transition to the widespread use of videoconferencing for holding a court session, as well as the resulting problems in identifying participants in the trial and the evidence presented.