HAMLYN - College of Social Sciences and International Studies ...

2. Civil Justice
Civil justice concerns the handling of disputes between citizens
arising out of civil, as opposed to criminal, law. The phrase is
normally used to signify all stages of civil disputes by courts,
including the issue of proceedings, settlement, trial and posttrial
appeals. In recent years what is defined as civil justice has
been broadened to include also a variety of other systems for
resolving disputes lumped together as Alternative Dispute Resolution
or ADR.
The subject has attracted much attention of late around the
world. In this jurisdiction we have had Lord Woolf's famous
reports on Access to Justice 1 implemented as a wide-ranging
package of reforms as from last April. But the Woolf report was
only the latest in a long line of such reports. There have been
over 60 official reports on the subject of civil process in the past
100 years, and no fewer than five since the Second World War—
the Evershed Report in 1953, 2 the Report of the Winn Committee
in 1968, 3 the Cantley Working Party in 1979, 4 the Civil Justice
Review in the late 1980s 5 and then Woolf. The focus of such
reports is always the same—how to reduce the complexity,
delay and cost of civil litigation. It seems that this is a subject
that refuses to go away. It is safe to predict that the Woolf report
will not be the last on the subject.
1 Interim Report, 1995; Final Report, 1996.
2 Final Report of the Committee on Supreme Court Practice and Procedure, Cmd. 8878
(1953).
3 Committee on Personal Injury Litigation, Cmnd. 369 (1968).
4 Report of the Personal Injuries Litigation Procedure Working Party, Cmnd. 7476
(1979).
5 In 1985-1986 the Review produced five Consultation Papers on Personal
Injuries, Small Claims, Commercial Court, Enforcement of Debt and Housing
Cases. In 1987, it produced its General Issues Paper and in 1988, its final report,
Report of the Review Body on Civil Justice, Cm. 394 (1988).
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