Civil Justice System Research Articles

A Qualitative Study Of Sexual Assault Survivors’ Post-Assault Legal System Experiences

ABSTRACTFollowing sexual assault, survivors may turn to the civil or criminal justice systems in pursuit of some form of legal justice. Informal support providers (SPs) often play a large role in survivors' post-assault experiences and recovery, including providing support during survivors’ decision to pursue legal justice and in navigating the system. Yet, this has not been thoroughly examined in research, particularly through a dyadic lens. Using qualitative dyadic data from 45 survivor-SP matched pairs (i.e., friend, family, or significant other), the current study addresses this gap by looking broadly at survivors’ post-assault experiences with the criminal and civil legal systems. Of the 45 pairs in the sample, the current study presents findings from a subsample of 28 survivors and 13 SPs regarding post-assault legal system experiences. Our findings suggest that survivors and SPs consider the perceived strength of their case, perceptions of police, and the possibility of institutional bias when deciding to report the assault to the police. Interviews revealed that reasons for legal system involvement extend beyond pursuance of perpetrator prosecution, such as filing for custody of their children after leaving a domestic violence situation or seeking financial compensation. Many survivors who had interactions with the police and legal system experienced secondary victimization, while a few survivors had positive experiences, despite their expectations. We recommend improved access to survivor advocates and suggest directions for future research stemming from findings.

Dirección compartida del proceso civil

La instauración del proceso por audiencias, con la mejora de todas las condiciones orgánicas y financieras del sistema de administración de justicia civil, no parece ser suficiente; requiere, además, fijar nuevos roles al juez y a las partes. Por el lado del juez, se impone una visión que asume un rol activo, de gerente y conductor. De esta forma, se verifica una simbiosis entre los sistemas adversarial e inquisitorio. La cultura jurídico-procesal comparada contemporánea comienza a ser condicionada en la necesidad de un juez cercano y con una intervención empática con las partes y sus representantes, que requiere una transformación de paradigmas. Por el lado de las partes, la competencia entre ellas por obtener un resultado positivo de victoria se matiza y equilibra con la cooperación. Todo el engranaje impone conductas de trato equitativo, debido y justo proceso como valores internos. Éstas son condiciones necesarias para un proceso civil eficaz, racional, justo y eficiente.

Normative, organization and legal support for the local civil and criminal courts in Reichcommissariat “Ukraine” (1941-1943)

World War II and the period of Nazi occupation of Ukraine became the period of severe Nazi social experimentation, the transformation of local society into the subject of pumping of raw materials and human resources. At the same time, in order to achieve the goal and objectives of the occupation, humiliation and neutralization of the resistance movement participants, the German administration had to create a certain appearance of law and order. An important role in this segment of occupation policy was played by the system of local civil and criminal courts that arose in mid-1942. The central government of the Reichcommissariat “Ukraine” succeeded in issuing several completed legal acts that regulated this sphere of functioning of the local society. Occupation topic has already become the central subject of research of contemporary Ukrainian historians. Thus, some aspects of local judicial institutions functioning in the RCU are covered in publications of O. Goncharenko, M. Kunitsky, and Y. Levchenko. But the legal lawmaking of the regional administrative units of the RCU, represented by the general commissariats, has actually remained out of their scientific attention. This is the subject of following study. The lawmaking process of the occupation administration of the RCU in the field of creating a system of civil and criminal justice envisaged the creation of normative acts of primary and regional (local) levels. The normative acts, adopted by the central department of the RCU, received the highest legal status. Normative acts adopted by the general commissariats received the status of sub-legal acts. With a few exceptions, the regulations of the general commissioners did not detail competently the specific provisions of the articles of the Reichcommissioner. Mainly, normative acts of the general commissioners contained technical details to the regulations of the Reichcommissioner. Other prescriptions of the Reichcommissar normative acts were simply repeated. The peculiarity of the normative acts of all levels, and especially of the heads of the general districts of “Zhytomyr”, “Volyn and Podillya”, was their extremely unsatisfactory translation from German into Ukrainian. Some specific legal instructions of normative acts, even those published in the official collections of documents, are difficult to understand. Therefore, one of the tasks of those representatives of the central and regional occupation administration of the RCU, who were responsible for creating the system of local justice, was to interpret the texts of the necessary normative acts.

Multilevel Access to Justice in a World of Vanishing Trials a Conflict Resolution Perspective

English Abstract: This paper proposes a novel approach to access to justice by introducing a complex multilevel model that addresses the stages of conflicts in an age of vanishing trials. It provides a nuanced understanding of various modes of access to justice that correspond with different needs of disempowered populations before they enter the legal system and as they make their long journey within it. Parties trying to resolve their disputes through the civil justice system end up nowadays drifting through an incoherent, inconsistent and opaque process generally resulting in some form of reluctant compromise. ADR processes such as mediation do not necessarily help in providing a genuine alternative throughout the legal process, in which reliable data regarding expected case disposition and outcome (on the basis of similar cases) are not made available to the parties. No systematic screening mechanism directs parties to holistic conflict resolution alternatives. The involvement of judges in promoting consensual disposition of legal cases is rare and limited in scope. Accordingly, many people who initiate lawsuits as default find themselves within an adversarial and incoherent negotiation process in the shadow of the courts. This problem is particularly true for unrepresented litigants, a growing population that seeks access to justice in contemporary court systems. It is also true for conflicts that never reach the court or any legal processing due to the barriers of cost and legal information. To address the question of access to justice in an age of vanishing trials, in light of the failure of ADR to become the prevailing paradigm for resolving conflicts and the decline of litigation, this paper develops an interdisciplinary multilevel model that draws on legal theory together with methodology from law and society scholarship. This model addresses ways for improving access to justice during each stage of the civil conflict, focusing specifically on the stage of pretrial hearings, as it is currently the main public sphere in which parties seek justice. Our findings regarding the role of judges in pretrials, based on court observations and interviews, suggest that that judges develop their own methods and perspectives to promote access to justice in an age of vanishing trials and in this paper we outline some of them. We propose to expand the horizons of access to justice by adopting our modular multilevel model embedded within a coherent Dispute System Design approach and inspired by public health perspectives on law.

The Justice is in the Details: Evaluating Different Self-Help Designs for Legal Capability in Traffic Court

How effective is a legal system that people cannot understand how to navigate? As more people try to navigate the civil justice system as self-represented litigants, there is more awareness about the importance of self-help tools that can build legal capability. If there is more effective self-help, then this can improve the quality of justice, both procedural and substantive, that people experience in the legal system. Yet there is little study of how and whether self-help can be effective in building legal capability, and which kinds of visuals, digital tools, or interactions are most effective at engaging people and helping them navigate the legal system. This paper builds off the nascent literature on how design can improve people’s navigation of complex bureaucratic systems, to conduct an exploratory design research into effective self-help for traffic court. It documents the participatory design process, lightweight exploratory evaluation method, and the findings on which type of self-help has the most promise for this area of court. It finds that visual design patterns have value, but that digital tools are needed to get user engagement and impact on outcomes.

Accountability and Transparency in U.S. Courts

Every judicial system in the world must balance the values of accountability and independence. Both are important. Accountability helps keep the judiciary in check, while independence allows the judiciary to act as a check and to avoid undue influence. Yet these values are often in tension. The more connected courts are to other arms of government and to the political process, the more accountable but the less independent they tend to be. Likewise, every judicial system must balance transparency and privacy. These too are important values that are in tension with each other. Transparency—including public access of court records and participation in court proceedings—confers legitimacy to courts and facilitates accountability. Yet transparency comes at a cost to litigant privacy. How different sovereigns strike those balances depends in many ways upon the particular role of their courts in both politics and society. In the US, accountability, independence, transparency, and privacy are informed by American judicial structures, their processes, and their unique connection to politics. This US Report, prepared for the International Association of Procedural Law's World Congress in Japan in 2019, describes and assesses those features of the American civil justice system in the hope that the American approach for its judiciary may be an informative point of comparison or contrast for other countries.

LA JUSTICIA CIVIL DE DOBLE HÉLICE HACIA UN SISTEMA INTEGRAL DE RESOLUCIÓN DE CONFLICTOS EN SEDE CIVIL

For a while now, we are witnessing a gradual but progressive incorporation of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms in the chilean legal system. However, they still have a secondary and marginal role. The foregoing contrasts with modern procedural trends that show that a connection bet- ween the judicial world and the world of alternative dispute resolution is not only possible, but indispensable for an accessible and efficient civil justice system. The approach of some basic premises for the design of an integral system for the solution of civil controversies is the objective of this work.

IMPLEMENTASI GUGATAN SEDERHANA DALAM LITIGASI DI PASAR MODAL SEBAGAI UPAYA PERLINDUNGAN KONSUMEN (INVESTOR) PASAR MODAL INDONESIA

Capital market sector is one of the financial services which quite dynamic in progress. Capital market transactions have varied characteristics and complexity. In its practices, many factors may motivate legal dispute in capital market in which mostly not settled in litigation way. The investors avoid settle their dispute through litigation mostly because of its formalistic procedure, time consume, and uncertainty of the result because of distrust against court system. The Indonesian Supreme Court has enacted Supreme Court Regulation No. 5 of 2015 concerning Small Claims Procedure as an effort to reform civil justice system which is simplify and expedite. The small claim procedure may offer dispute settlement which simple and quick, however it is limited with the claim value up to Rp200 millions, while mostly capital market transaction has greater value than Rp200 millions. This article will discuss the implementation of the small claims procedure in investor dispute settlement in the capital market. Moreover, this article also elaborates the advantages and disadvantages of small claims procedure in settling investor dispute as a protection to the consumer in capital market.

Domestic Violence Asylum and the Perpetuation of the Victimization Narrative

Pitiful. Helpless. Powerless. The words often used to describe survivors of domestic violence conjure a vivid and specific image of a woman lacking both strength and agency. These (mis)conceptions stem from the theories of “Battered Woman Syndrome” and “learned helplessness,” developed in 1979 by psychologist Lenore Walker, who hypothesized that intimate partner abuse ultimately causes a woman to resign herself to her fate and cease efforts to free herself from violence or dangerous situations. Although widely criticized, learned helplessness has permeated the legal establishment, for example, serving as the foundation for mandatory arrest and “no drop” policies in the criminal sphere of domestic violence law. Legal scholars have examined the problematic impacts of both the theory of learned helplessness itself and its effect on survivors in the criminal and civil justice systems. This article adds to that important conversation by exploring the previously unexamined area of learned helplessness’ impact on immigration, specifically asylum, law. Through a series of cases from 1996 to 2014, it is now established that a woman may receive asylum protection if she can establish that she is “unable to leave” a violent domestic relationship. This formulation fits squarely within Walker’s framework, as it requires a victim to advance a narrative of helplessness if she is to obtain refuge in the United States. Furtherance of the notion of Battered Woman Syndrome in asylum law is troubling for a number of reasons, namely, as this piece details, in the harms that can result when survivors of domestic violence are required to conform to a specific “stock story” (including injury to both those who fit the stereotype and those who do not). Additionally, continued adherence to and reliance on learned helplessness poses challenges for client-centered lawyering, perpetuates the tendency of victim-blaming, ignores the realities of the dangers of separation violence, and furthers the damaging dichotomy of “worthy” and “unworthy” immigrants. By identifying these concerns and proposing alternative bases for protection that would encompass not just pitiable and vulnerable victims of domestic violence, but strong, empowered and capable fighters against domestic abuse, this article seeks to critique, rebut and prevent the infiltration of static and stereotypical images of battered women in the realm of immigration law.

Introduction

Introduction

A study into situated learning through community legal companionship

Against the background of the current graduate skills agenda and its considered importance in relation to a UK law degree, this article considers the value of the CLOCK Community Legal Companion scheme, a collaborative social justice project involving law students, legal services providers, third sector advice agencies and law courts based in two areas of the country namely; Canterbury and Brighton. In recent years, the UK Government has significantly cut civil legal aid in areas such as housing, family and welfare benefits, with a view to easing the strain on the deficit. These cuts have been opposed by many, including lawyers, who have raised concerns that the most vulnerable within our communities could be left unrepresented in court and as a consequence an undue burden placed on our civil justice system. CLOCK therefore provides an opportunity for those within our communities who are caught in the so-called ‘justice gap’, to gain support and guidance from law students when they attend court unrepresented. The findings of a small-scale research project into the perceived benefits of Community Legal Companionship, conducted at two UK law schools; Canterbury Christ Church University and the University of Brighton, indicate that the socio-legal experiential learning opportunities for undergraduate law students presented by such initiatives, are also valuable in terms of legal skills acquisition. The research shows that the scheme not only enables law students to use their legal knowledge for the benefit of their local community, but also through analysis of their own perceptions, demonstrates how such a community-based project can provide undergraduate law students with valuable employability skills. Experiences of setting up a Community Legal Companion scheme, together with an overview of how the scheme operates in the Canterbury and Brighton County Courts, as well as students’ reflections of participating as Community Legal Companions drawn from the empirical qualitative research, are evaluated in this article.

Civil RICO: An Effective Deterrent to Fraudulent Asbestos Litigation?

In January 2014, a bankruptcy judge, in an unprecedented act, held that several plaintiff law firms specializing in mesothelioma litigation had engaged in a “startling pattern of misrepresentation” by directing their clients who had sued the Debtor to falsely deny exposure to the asbestos-containing products of other companies which had previously gone bankrupt. A U.S. District Court judge presiding over RICO actions filed by the Debtor against four of the mesothelioma firms concluded that the bankruptcy judge’s holdings mirrored the Debtor’s allegations in the RICO suits that “Defendants engaged in a wide-ranging systematic and well-concealed fraud designed to suppress evidence. . .” These RICO actions posed a clear and present danger to the plaintiffs’ mesothelioma litigation bar. Few RICO actions have been filed in mass tort litigations even where there has been compelling evidence of fraudulent practices by plaintiffs’ counsel. Despite the paucity of such actions, two authors have published articles in the Michigan and Iowa Law Reviews warning against allowing application of RICO to “retaliate” against plaintiffs’ counsel. One author contends that use of RICO would be “illegal on several grounds including the Rules Enabling Act” and “threatens the right to petition the courts for redress.” Even when a mass tort defendant is alleging that a plaintiffs’ counsel, in multiple state court filings, had engaged in a wide-ranging scheme to defraud the defendant in those actions, for that author, RICO “is not the answer.” The other author contends that allowing unfettered RICO actions would unleash a parade of horrors including “upset[ting] the delicate federal-state balance,” “squander[ing] scare judicial resources,” “exacerbat[ing] courthouse incivility” and “ultimately skew[ing] the civil justice system further in favor of well-heeled players.” These claims, in the main, do not pass the test of rationality. In this article, I counter the arguments raised by these authors including claims that remedies already exist for defrauded mass tort defendants such as abuse of process, malicious prosecution, FRCP Rule 11 and FRCP Rule 60. None of these listed remedies, however, have any utility in deterring mass tort fraud. As for the argument posed that effective fraud-curtailing mechanisms have emerged in recent years, I show that the evidence cited in support is less than meets the eye. In this article, I closely examine five RICO suits alleging mass tort fraud to show both the strengths and weaknesses of RICO as a deterrent to mass tort fraud. I also point out how the civil justice system has not only failed to deter mass tort fraud but actually facilitates fraudulent testimony by doctors in such litigations and how bankruptcy courts have inadvertently facilitated fraudulent practices by plaintiffs’ counsel in asbestos litigation by rulings that effectively legitimate those practices. Fraudulent practices have permeated a variety of mass tort litigations. The only reasonable conclusion that can be reached in view of the lack of sanctions is that lawyers and doctors they hire because of their propensity to “manufacture diagnoses for money” and “find evidence of the disease that they were. . . being paid to find” have immunity from prosecution or professional discipline. Hobbling RICO will remove one of the only ways in which lawyers that have engaged in wide-ranging fraudulent practices in mass tort litigations may be sanctioned.

Measuring the Accessibility and Equality of Civil Justice

While, in the UK, attitudes to the criminal justice system have been routinely investigated less effort has been made to measure attitudes to the civil justice system. However, globally, there are increasingly numerous examples of studies of attitudes to civil justice. Robust standardised scales are important to establishing change and difference between groups; for example, in the context of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16.3. Past focus has been on developing ‘composite indicators’. This paper sees the application of modern psychometric methods to the construction of ‘reflective’ instruments to measure single unidimensional attitude dimensions. Drawing on relevant theoretical frameworks, we administered an item pool of 35 attitude questions to a sample of 1061 adults across England and Wales. Principal component analysis was used to identify attitude domains, followed by Rasch analysis to construct scales with acceptable psychometric properties. An Inaccessibility of Justice (IOJ) scale and a Perceived Inequality of Justice (PIJ) scale resulted. Respondents who regarded themselves as having handled past civil legal problems poorly or having experienced unfair outcomes had higher IOJ and PIJ scores. Negative accounts of lawyers or courts from others were also associated with higher scores. Our substantive findings help explain how negative experiences of problem resolution can result in ‘frustrated resignation’ for later problems, and show the importance of positive experiences and accounts of the justice system in maintaining public support. The scales have broad justice policy utility and the methods provide a template for future related scale development.

Information Costs and the Civil Justice System

Litigation is costly because information is not free. Given that information is costly and perfect information prohibitively costly, courts will occasionally err. Finally, the fact that information is costly implies an unavoidable degree of informational asymmetry between disputants. This paper presents a model of the civil justice system that incorporates these features of the real world and probes its implications for compliance with the law, efficiency of law, accuracy in adjudication, trial outcome statistics, and the evolution of legal standards. The model’s claims are applied to and tested against the relevant empirical and legal literature.

Women, Religion and Health Policy in a Nigerian Community

Focusing in recent decades on the city of Ilorin, in Kwara State, southwest Nigeria, I propose to consider the interrelationships and tension between religious convictions and healthcare policy, as a case study for evaluating the status of women in the Nigerian polity. My resolve on this approach is informed by the pervasive religiosity of the Nigerian nation and by the minimal attention accorded religion in policy formation and Nigerian women. The correlation between philosophy and religion mandates the serious consideration of religion in policy formation and execution. One foremost example is the case of Kwara State’s health sector, especially noticeable in policies concerning child and maternal mortality. I intend to investigate the underlining principles among the people for certain practices that have presented serious challenges to health care policies and their implementation. While three major religions of Nigeria are adequately represented in Ilorin, Islam prevails over Christian and indigenous religions. Although the Islamic system of sharia is not practiced as the sole judicial system in Ilorin, Kwara State, the implications of sharia, which is practiced in conjunction with the civil justice system, for the status of women is apparent. An attempt will be made to proffer explanations and answers where applicable to critical questions. What is the role of religion in women’s identity formation? How does this role affect women’s status in the society and health programs in Nigeria e. g maternal and child health and education policies? How may an appreciation of the status of women in the religious sector affect their reception and utilization of official health policies? Are there mutual avenues that accommodate the religious identity of women and explicate health issues? How may religion serve as a prism for re-evaluating the state’s health care policy for women?

Designing the Tax Treatment of Litigation-Related Costs

Defendants often deduct for income tax purposes their litigation-related costs, such as attorney fees and payments to settle claims or satisfy judgments. The result is often a large gap between the sticker price of settlements or judgments and their after-tax cost—what defendants really pay out of pocket. The problem: For every dollar that a defendant avoids in tax liability by, for example, deducting the damage awards it pays, the civil justice system falls that much short of its corrective-justice or optimal-deterrence goals in that case. For this reason, the entire civil justice system should care about this question: How should income tax law treat litigation-related costs? This Article identifies the critical tax-design choices that must be faced but that prior commentary has largely ignored: How to attribute litigation-related costs to an income-producing activity; whether to treat liability insurer payments made on a defendant’s behalf as income to that defendant; whether to coordinate the tax treatment of a payor’s damages payments with the tax treatment of those receipts to the payee; and whether litigation-related costs should be treated as capital expenditures. Then, the Article offers a new default rule for settlement agreements: Unless a settlement agreement expressly indicates otherwise, a settling defendant promises not to seek an allowable tax deduction for litigation-related costs. In so doing, this Article reveals the issues that lawyers, judges, and scholars must no longer ignore when they argue over how an income tax system could or should treat litigation-related costs.

Monitoring Consumer ADR in the EU: A Critical Perspective

One of the key objectives of Directive 2013/11/EU (the Consumer ADR Directive) has been to promote high quality ADR entities through the creation of a certification scheme for ADR providers. In parallel, the Directive has also established a monitoring framework in which Member States’ 'Competent Authorities' play pivotal roles to ensure ADR providers’ continuous performance and compliance. Against this background, key questions arise with regard to the enforcement of those quality standards, and the behaviour of those entities that are in charge of monitoring. While presenting the particularities of ADR monitoring schemes established in Member States, this paper argues that, despite the efforts made to promote high quality ADR schemes, the Consumer ADR Directive has ultimately fallen short of securing a consistent approach to ADR monitoring across the EU and has left open the possibility for patchy and disorganised initiatives at Member States’ level. This is due to the high number of national Competent Authorities currently operating in the EU and issues with monitoring architectures, insufficiency of the quality standards set out in the Directive, and risks of highly diverging monitoring behaviour from Competent Authorities. Moreover, the possible coexistence of certified and non-certified ADR providers in some Member States tends to undermine the overall homogeneity of ADR sectors and creates confusion for consumers. A more structured and effective approach to ADR monitoring is needed for meeting consumers’ expectations, ensuring consistency, and creating a levelled playing field for all ADR providers. Competent Authorities have the capacity to contribute significantly to a better rationalisation of ADR sectors, and a better embedment of ADR within civil justice systems. Revised monitoring architectures should help maximise their interventions. In the context of the upcoming publication of the national monitoring reports expected by 9 July 2018, considering these changes appear particularly timely.

Looking into the Day-To-Day Process of Victim Safety Planning

Although safety planning is a widely recommended intervention for domestic violence and sexual assault victims, there has been limited research on the safety planning process, content, context or effectiveness. This study builds on prior research to increase the understanding of safety planning in every day practice through focus group discussions with domestic violence and sexual assault advocates from a variety of settings. Five focus groups with 37 participants from a variety of settings discussed typical safety planning strategies and addressing the complexity of safety in challenging situations. Six main themes emerged with regard to typical safety planning strategies. Additionally, discussions revealed there are no widely accepted protocols or evidence-based strategies regarding how to assess and handle common but risky situations. Lastly, results indicate that risks are multi-layered and impacted by resources available to victims as well as civil or criminal justice system procedures, policies and victim status. It is essential that evidence based best practices and protocols be developed for safety planning for a number of high risk situations along with ongoing training, supervision and support. Future research is needed to examine whether, and how, safety planning best practices and protocols should differ depending on agency setting or delivery mode (e.g., hotline, case management, counseling) and geographic context.

Damage capitation in the modern liability climate: a primer for neurosurgeons and systematic review of the literature

OBJECTIVE Neurosurgery, and particularly spine surgery, is among the most highly litigated medical specialties in the US, rendering the current malpractice climate of primary importance to spine surgeons nationwide. One of the primary methods of tort reform in the civil justice system is malpractice damage capitation (or "caps"); however, its efficacy is widely debated. The purpose of this article is to serve as a review for the practicing neurosurgeon, with particular emphasis on short- and long-term effects of damage caps and on the current debate regarding their utility, based on a systematic review of the literature. METHODS The Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (MOOSE) guidelines for systematic review of observational studies were used in the design of the study. Multiple medical and legal online databases (MEDLINE, Scopus, EMBASE, and JSTOR) were queried using the key words "malpractice" and "damage capitation" for articles from 2000 to 2014. A total of 96 abstracts were screened for inclusion and exclusion criteria. Of these, 22 articles were reviewed in full and another 15 were excluded for study design or poor quality of data. Five more studies were added after cross-checking the bibliographies of the included articles. The resulting 12 articles were evaluated; relevant data were extracted using a standardized metric. RESULTS Five studies were found showing varying effects of capitation on physician availability, with only 1 of these specifically showing increased availability of neurosurgery and elective spine coverage in states with capitation. Four studies demonstrated that capitation overall succeeds in decreasing jury awards and frequency of claims filed. Last, 3 studies were found showing an overall decrease in malpractice premiums for states that passed damage capitation. CONCLUSIONS There is evidence in the literature showing that total and noneconomic damage capitation has the potential to improve the practice environment for neurosurgeons nationwide. Additionally, there are other factors that affect malpractice premium rates, such as the investment markets, which are not affected by these laws. All of these are important for spine surgeons to consider and be aware of in advocating for appropriate reform measures in their states.

Compensation at the Crossroads: Autonomous Vehicles and Alternative Victim Compensation Schemes

Fully autonomous vehicles will become available to consumers within the next five to seven years. Experts predict that these vehicles will be drastically safer than their human-driven counterparts and will save thousands of lives each year in the United States alone. However, crashes will still occur, and when they do, they will raise unique and troubling issues about liability and fault that both negligence and products liability jurisprudence are not yet well-suited to handle. Whether the civil justice system can adjudicate autonomous vehicle crash cases fairly and efficiently, in turn, impacts (a) whether manufacturers can afford to produce these vehicles or whether the cost and magnitude of litigation surrounding them will destroy their market, (b) whether consumers will adopt this new technology, and (c) the rate at which they will be willing and able to do so. These issues, in turn, have an impact on how many lives can be saved on U.S. roads each year. It is thus imperative to design a method of compensating victims, protecting manufacturers, and giving courts time and space to develop jurisprudence applicable to this technology if we wish to reap the profound benefits that fully autonomous vehicles stand to offer. While filing a lawsuit in the civil justice system will always be an option for victims of autonomous vehicle crashes, a specially designed, no-fault victim compensation fund offers a sensible way to address the issues identified above and to resolve these cases in a faster and less costly manner. While the use of victim compensation funds is a fairly recent phenomenon in the United States, these funds have been used with great success in a variety of situations and could be used successfully here. In the model proposed in this paper, an autonomous vehicle crash victim compensation fund would be administered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and financed by a tax levied on the sale of all fully autonomous vehicles. Victims who wish to seek compensation from the fund would be able to do so via a simple claim form and an agreement to waive their right to sue. Manufacturers, in turn, would be required to participate in a data-sharing and design improvement program as a condition of receiving protection from the fund. This program would both assist NHTSA in gathering the information it needs to regulate autonomous vehicles and reduce the likelihood that a victim compensation fund would reduce manufacturer incentives to improve the safety of their vehicles. Participation by both victims and manufacturers would be voluntary, but the benefits of entering the fund would likely induce high levels of participation from both.