Let Agency Circulate: Architectures and Strategies for Pan-European e-Justice

Abstract

The development of a pan-European e-justice platform supporting transborder proceedings requires shared infrastructures supporting interoperability at legal, semantic, technological and institutional level. The challenge may quickly reach high level of complexity hindering the development and use of the system. Moving from the theoretical framework developed in the book, and from the findings of six case studies, the chapter pinpoints design principles addressed to ease the design and development of an e-justice platform supporting the circulation of agency in transborder judicial proceedings. Principles are meant to keep the development and use of the system below the threshold of maximum manageable complexity, without impinging the requirements of legal and social performa-tivity needed by judicial proceedings. The design principles, being relevant for e-justice application at national and pan-European level, are used to identify alternative techno-institutional architectures supporting the circulation of agency in the Payment Order and Small Claims Proceedings recently introduced by the Euro-pean law. Architectures are assessed considering their impact on complexity and the effects on the circulation of agency. Finally, the chapter suggests a strategy based on the cultivation of the installed base and on the decupling of European and national e-Justice platforms to cope with the multiple and contradictory requirements of e-justice development in transborder proceedings.