With online courts now moving from idea to reality, we are looking at the most fundamental change to our justice system for centuries, but the public understanding of and debate about the revolution is only just beginning.
In Online Courts and the Future of Justice Richard Susskind, a pioneer of rethinking law for the digital age, confronts the challenges facing our legal system and the potential for technology to bring much needed change. Drawing on years of experience leading the discussion on conceiving and delivering online justice, Susskind here charts and develops the public debate.
Against a background of austerity politics and cuts to legal aid, the public case for online courts has too often been framed as a business case by both sides of the debate. Are online courts preserving the public bottom line by finding efficiencies? Or sacrificing the interests of the many to deliver cut price justice? Susskind broadens the debate by making the moral case (whether online courts are required by principles of justice) and the jurisprudential case (whether online courts are compatible with our understanding of judicial process and constitutional rights) for delivering justice online.
Includes a substantial new chapter updating the book with the developments in online courts since the onset of Covid-19.
Professor Richard Susskind OBE is an author, speaker, and independent adviser to international professional firms and national governments. He is President of the Society for Computers and Law, IT Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England, and Chair of the Advisory Board of the Oxford Internet Institute. His numerous books include the best-sellers, The End of Lawyers? (OUP, 2008) and Tomorrow's Lawyers (OUP, 2013), his work has been translated into more than 10 languages, and he has been invited to speak in over 40 countries.