Linkedin Group for Microjustice

Jin Ho Verdonschot of Tilburg Univeristy (secifically TISCO - Tilburg Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Civil Law and Conflict Resolution Systems) has started a LinkedIn Group for the Microjustice Initiative. 

(UPDATE 4/2009- A year after this last post, Maaike de Langen, policy specialist on legal empowerment of the poor for the United Nations Development Program, created the 'Legal Empowerment Early Adopters' LinkedIn Group. )


(UPDATE 10/2009 See my recent post on the newly created Ning Group for Legal Empowerment of the Poor, created by UNDP Asia Regional Office in Bangkok. Reflective of... NGO coordination!)

Linkedin Group for Microjustice

Jin Ho Verdonschot of Tilburg Univeristy (secifically TISCO - Tilburg Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Civil Law and Conflict Resolution Systems) has started a LinkedIn Group for the Microjustice Initiative. 

(UPDATE 4/2009- A year after this last post, Maaike de Langen, policy specialist on legal empowerment of the poor for the United Nations Development Program, created the 'Legal Empowerment Early Adopters' LinkedIn Group. )

A short history of legal informatics

In reviewing the Parliament Working Paper No. 2 (by Global Centre for ICT), which is an excellent paper in itself, I came across a good and short history of legal informatics- the use of ICT to process and support legal information and activities. I am reproducing and adapting this part of the paper here:

Legal informatics is the discipline which deals with the use of ICT to process legal information and support legal activities, namely, the creation, the cognition and the application of the law. As automatic processing of information has been expanding from mathematics calculations to data management, office automation, telecommunications and the global knowledge infrastructure, the domain of legal informatics has been consequently expanding.
Historical evolution:

• The first realization of legislative informatics goes back to the 1960’s when the first databases of legal documents were started. 

• The 1970’s saw the growth of informatics within the public administration, where large databases where constructed with various administrative data (e.g. population data, fiscal data,etc.)

• The 1980’s were the time of the personal computer, which enabled the decentralized use of information technology by individual users. This was the era of office automation, when computers entered most legal and administrative offices (both in the public and the private domain), accompanied by suites of user-friendly applications (though the use of information technologies was generally limited to mundane applications limited to a single user, like text processing, archiving data, using databases).

• The 1990’s were characterized by the creation of computerized information systems for supporting the activities of many legal organizations, which lead to the integration of the so far separate applications. At this time, in general, automation within legal organizations (parliaments, judiciaries, public administrations) started being conceived as an integrated enterprise. The introduction of ICT within legal bodies ceased to consists in the mere provision of new tools (leaving the existing procedures unchanged); it has become the occasion for reengineering processes according to the potentialities of ICT-based information systems, for rationalizing workflows of enhancing the capabilities of the concerned organization. At the same time legal informatics has started to adopt (and to contribute to) advanced techniques for managing legal information. Analyses of legal reasoning and knowledge developed within legal informatics have proved very useful for legal theory in areas such as legal reasoning and the modeling of norms and normative concepts. On the other hand models developed within legal informatics have been used within computing and in particular within artificial intelligence, in areas such as belief revision or defensible reasoning (Prakken and Sartor 1997).

• Between the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s legal informatics has increased its impact on management and integration of processes concerning production and application of law. Profiting from the opportunities of the Internet, it has expanded its scope to the communications between legal organizations and their public, namely citizens, economic units, and their consultants (lawyers, accountants, etc.). In this way, it has become a significant aspect and an important resource of e-government, which in general terms may be viewed as the public sector’s use of ICT with the aim of improving information and service delivery, encouraging participation and making government more accountable, transparent and effective. 

• Now: As the law is at the core of governance, legal informatics is, therefore, now at the core of egovernance. Its applications span from the legislative domain to the judiciary, to administration, to legal professionals. In all of these areas the use of ICT can contribute to the efficiency of legal processes and to their rationalization, as well as to the realization of legal values such as transparency and controllability (by providing information about legal processes), reasoned deliberation (enhancing the possibility of engaging in informed and reasoned debate), democracy (providing all citizens with information about social problems and their legislative and legal treatment, and new way to discuss such problems and to interact with representative bodies and with their members).

Paper- the concept of Microjustice

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1022936

Abstract:  

In this essay, we introduce the concept of Microjustice as an approach to tackle the problem of access to justice for those with limited resources. In addition to existing perspectives, we propose to analyze the justice sector as a 'market' with its corresponding chain of supply and a demand. The challenge is to develop processes that are affordable to users with limited resources, whilst making it attractive for the providers of justice to act as suppliers. Microjustice allows the demand for justice and the supply of justice to meet by using tools of the modern services economy: information technology, economies of scale, cheaper labor at the place of delivery, flexible adjustment to local circumstances, self-help and empowerment of the user. The analogy to microfinance is instructive. 

We first explore how the market for justice works and why justice does not reach the poor. Next, we proceed to the development principles for Microjustice, drawing on the work of Prahalad and Hart regarding markets at the 'Bottom of the Pyramid.' We also show that legal systems are surrounded by knowledge that has an enormous potential for innovation, but are not yet open enough to use this potential. We give some examples of how Microjustice could look like in practice. Then we investigate the limitations of the market perspective and possible other objections to the Microjustice approach. We conclude by inviting the legal sector service providers, NGO's and other institutions working on access to rights to consider the development of innovative services in the spirit of microjustice. Moreover, we urge governments and donors to think about access to justice programs in terms of creating a climate for innovation and a business climate that stimulates legal service providers to deliver their services at the bottom of the pyramid.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 31

Keywords: access to justice, legal services

JEL Classifications: D63, D73, D74, K41, K42, O17, O31

Working Paper Series

Maurits Barendrecht 

Tilburg Law School; Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC)

Patricia Van Nispen 

International Legal Alliances

February 1, 2008

TILEC Discussion Paper No. 2008-010 

ICT for Microjustice?

I've previously written about Microjustice, and today, ICT4Peace reported on her blog about the Microjustice Initiative.

An overview of the initiative is available here. Excerpts from an email exchange I had with some of the Microjustice Initiative’s key thought-leaders follows (and was based on the initial concept note they sent to me):

To May Britt | 3rd September 2007The paper, which I read through briefly, sounds very interesting and timely. I would submit, and I am sure you would agree, that the technical architecture required for the systems envisaged in the paper would be easier to design than the networks of community participation required for it to be (and to be seen as) effective and just. This is particular a problem in societies where inter-communal trust is abysmal, such as regions of protected ethnic conflict. Micro-justice in these regions are invariably tied to the larger social and political inequity – and addressing them on the ground needs to be done in parallel with larger systemic legal (constitutional) and political changes at the national level. As a study on ADR done by some of my colleagues at the Centre for Policy Alternatives found out, there’s a rich tradition of ADR in conflict zones, but the practice and promotion of these mechanisms is deeply problematic in violent conflict.
There’s also the question of gender – which I didn’t see directly addressed in the paper. It is often the case that even successful ADR mechanisms are in the control of and culturally primarily address the needs of men. The access to and participation of women in micro-justice initiatives I think is of paramount importance, but also tied to the particular cultural dynamics of a region country / locale. You may be interested in the two attached papers I wrote a few years ago on the use of mobiles and PCs in ODR at a very local level and also in the work of the Claro Parlade in the Philippines.
Email from Prof. Mr. J.M. Barendrecht, Universiteit van Tilburg | 5th September 2007
You are absolutely right, the IT structure is doable, the networks of community participation are much more critical. Our guess is that providing simple and understandable information about what fair outcomes are for standard disputes would contribute to making existing informal processes more just. Moreover we assume that a ‘business model’ can be developed in which local people upload local knowledge about fairness to a Microjustice website. But we need people who have this knowledge and have an interest in doing this. Much research and development will be necessary, and that is why try to involve not only NGO’s, but also IT companies.

New Law and Development Blog by Law Professors

Law Professor Tom Ginsburg of University of Illinois has started a Law and Development Blog on the Law Professor Blogs platform (which is a network of law professors blogs, grouped usually by subject matter).  There is also repository of Law and Development syllabus from various professors and schools, which is useful comparison on how different that subject is taught in law schools. I look forward to hearing more academic (and applied?) thoughts on this subject- Tom Ginsburg is a respected academic AND practitioner.

Facebook goes to China!

I came across this report from Reuters reporting that Facebook will be in China as early as next month. Wow! I wonder if China will start to censor it like the other services? Duh- need I even ask? 

Report on Chinese Internet Censorship- "Journey to the Heart of Internet Censorship"

A Chinese colleague recently directed me to a Reporters Without Borders report on Chinese Internet Censorship. This report is produced by an anonymous Chinese internet expert, with funding and support from Reporters Without Borders and Chinese Human Rights Defenders, with good timing in light of the Beijing Olympics. 

Having designed and implemented projects in China for more than a decade now, and experiencing firsthand the culture of censorship and control, I think that this report is pretty accurate based on my experience.  Here are some key summary points: (You can view and download the full report here at Reporters Without Borders)

• China has always controlled all traditional media, and the Internet poses a new challenge for control. China now has more than 160 million Internet users and at least 1.3 million websites, both of which continue to grow.
• China blocks thousands of websites, censor online news and imprisons activists. 
• Leading actors include the 
• Internet Propaganda Administrative Bureau (affiliated with the Information Office of the State Council, the executive office of the government), 
• Bureau of Information and Public Opinion (affiliated with the party’s Publicity Department, the former Propaganda Department) and 
• Internet Bureau (another Publicity Department affliate).
• Beijing Internet Information Administrative Bureau 
• Other secondary bodies listed in the report
• Some methods of control include:
• (as per the report) "a skilful mix of filtering technologies, cyberpolice surveillance and propaganda, in all of which China invests massively.", at both the national and local level
• Government employees and University journalism students are trained vigorously, to the point of 'ideology control', while key staff of online companies (including Yahoo!) are asked to go on a propagandistic Chinese "online media trip". 
• The government, through the Beijing Internet Information Administrative Bureau, asserts daily editorial control via a variety of ways (such as meetings, emails/SMS and directives) over leading news agencies based in Beijing. Many agencies practice self-censorship as a result. 
• In addition to passive monitoring, especially after 2005 when the Beijing Internet Information Administrative Bureau was formed, the government actively control internet news by insisting the publication of propagandistic materials.
• Key-word censorship (where government or self-censors use to monitor sites):
• masked words: words replaced by an asterisk
• sensitive words: words that need to be checked by moderators before they can be posted
• taboo words: words that cannot be posted or isolated or appear in an article’s content.
• Penalties that have been inflicted includes: media criticism, strict fines, dismissal of site employee, and site closure. 
• When bloggers and others have appealed or otherwise made their plight public, they have been ignored, threatened or imprisoned. Similarly, human rights activists are imprisoned.  
• Recommendations on eluding control
• proxy server to to hide IP addresses, and downloading software to access foreign sites
• exploiting the different levels of censorship between provinces or between levels in the administration and 
• using new Internet technologies (blogs, discussion forums, Internet telephony etc.)

You can view and download the full report here at Reporters Without Borders