E-Justice Platforms: Challenges for Judicial Governance

Abstract

This article discusses e-justice platform development and its implications for judicial governance. Procedural decisions and court work processes can now be encoded into the digital court work environment. This may affect fundamental values such as fair procedure and judicial impartiality and independence. The article compares three e-justice platforms (EJP): e-Curia (Court of Justice of the European Union), Civil Trial on Line (TOL) in Italy, and <em>Kwaliteit en Innovatie Rechtspraak</em> (KEI) in the Netherlands. In an innovative approach, it considers EJP’s as enterprise information systems. It combines functional and managerial perspectives with those of procedural law and technology. The paper studies the impact of merging procedural law and technology for developing EJP’s and for reconciling the requirements of both law and technology in the highly regulated context of courts and judiciaries. The paper finds that, in EJP development and implementation, law and technology’s combined effect may affect fair procedure. The article concludes with a discussion of the kind of governance needed to safeguard fair procedure and proper functioning of IT in courts. This need becomes even more pressing with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI). The article finds that resolving these issues is part of the judiciary’s responsibility for fair procedures and cannot be left to IT experts. It offers some standards and principles for judicial governance to fulfill judicial responsibility for fair procedures as laid down in the human rights conventions.