E-Court in resolving civil cases - Foreign experiences and recommendations for Vietnam

Abstract

Applying digital technology in state management activities is a trend that many countries are actively implementing. Experiences from other foreign countries show that digitizing and technologizing judicial activities is an inevitable trend to simplify administrative procedures, maximize the settlement of disputes to ensure legitimate rights of people, and to maintain social order. Vietnam is therefore not out of that trend. However, the application of information technology to the Court's activities in Vietnam has just been initially organized through a number of activities such as online filing, electronic case management..., but for the online trial, the Vietnamese law still does not have a complete legal framework. In the context of Covid-19 epidemy, the employment of E-court becomes even more necessary than ever. Because of social distancing, many activities, including court trial have been postponed. This can cause many inconveniences to the court (to comply with the law on procedural time), and to the parties (who wants to solve their legal issues as quick as possible, so that they can enjoy well their legal rights and interests). However, this model of court needs many conditions to be developed: investment of Government, qualifications of competent persons, people’s scientific and technical level… It should be noted that technological measures are just a different implementation method of the procedural provisions, but due to being as the procedural law, these implementation steps should be clearly specified in the law, so as not to be considered a violation of the proceedings. Thus, the contents of law need to be legalized such as applicable conditions, procedures on initiating a lawsuit, on giving announcement to parties... In fact and theory, all kind of civil cases can be judged online as long as the requirements of platform and demand of participating parties are met. And the civil procedure law can add regulations about the online method to some of necessary procedural steps as an additional choice to the parties. The article focuses on recommending the building of a E-Court model in Vietnam in civil proceedings, where this model can be effectively applied due to the civil nature of the case, with the research method of analysis, thesis and comparison with other foreign laws, such as Malaysia, Korea, Australia and Canada.