Judging Civil Justice

Description

The civil justice system supports social order and economic activity, but a number of factors over the last decade have created a situation in which the value of civil justice is being undermined and the civil courts are in a state of dilapidation. For the 2008 Hamlyn Lectures, Dame Hazel Genn discusses reforms to civil justice in England and around the world over the last decade in the context of escalating expenditure on criminal justice and vanishing civil trials. In critically assessing the claims and practice of mediation for civil disputes, she questions whether diverting cases out of the public courts and into private dispute resolution promotes access to justice, looks critically at the changed expectations of the judiciary in civil justice and points to the need for a better understanding of how judges 'do justice'.

Dame Hazel Genn is Dean of Laws, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies and co-director of the Centre for Empirical Legal Studies in the Faculty of Laws at University College London, where she is also an Honorary Fellow. In 2006, she was appointed an Inaugural Commissioner of the new Judicial Appointments Commission established under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 and was a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life from 2003 to 2008. She worked with the Judicial Studies Board for 12 years, serving as a member of the Main Board and the Tribunals Committee, closely involved in the design and delivery of training for the judiciary at all levels. A leading authority on access to justice, she has published widely in the field.

'Hazel Genn does not pull her punches. [The lectures] should be required reading especially for policy makers in government and for the senior judiciary.' Michael Zander QC, New Law Journal