In many parts of the world, the adoption of alternative dispute-resolution (ADR) processes was premised on creating better access to justice for citizens, particularly those with lesser means (Woolf, 1996; Access to Justice Advisory Committee, 1994). ADR's foundational link with access to justice is in relation to not only justice as a process for the resolution of disputes, but also justice in relation to equality of access and equitable outcomes. This Special Issue focuses on the relationship between ADR and access to justice in various contexts and jurisdictions, including Australia, China, England and Wales, Scotland and Singapore, and within the family-law system in Australia. The papers engage in a critical discussion of ADR's contribution to access to justice in the resolution of disputes and, in particular, the extent to which ADR has contributed to improved access to justice. In doing this, the papers highlight the role of access-to-justice discourse in the development and growth of ADR; where available, review evaluations of access to justice in relation to ADR initiatives; and, finally, reflect on the future of ADR and access to justice.

This paper examines the work of lawyers, judges and country experts involved in asylum and migration litigation. I begin by analysing their work in the wider semi-autonomous asylum field within which a number of powerful institutions operate to shape policy, define the roles of key actors and determine access to legal redress/justice by asylum applicants and migrants. To understand the work of these three legal actors, I analyse four very different types of legal cases involving asylum, foreign adoption and migration law. An analysis of these cases helps to identify the constraints on effective litigation on behalf of refugees and migrants against the British Home Office and it illustrates the fact that it is Home Office policy, and the decisions taken by Home Office officials, that created the injustice for the individuals concerned by blurring the ‘bright line’ differentiating between the rights of nationals and those of ‘foreigners’.

This paper aims at providing an account of the Islamic conception of Gharar in contrast to the current Western conceptualisation of risk, using the respective financial legal frameworks of both as the criterion. One of the more decisive stakes of the difference in approach between the Islamic and contemporary Western legal orders today concern the regulation of financial markets; specifically, the definitions of risk and uncertainty – crucial characteristics of modern economies – can be understood as preferentially related to specific features of Islamic law. In the end, according to Knight, money-creation processes are centred on uncertainty. Without uncertainty, there is no profit. This is why, although different at first sight, Islamic finance with its understanding of permissible Gharar and Western finance with its uncertainty-aversion trend have become more resilient, especially since the financial crisis (2007–2010).

Scholars have long argued that transnational legal indicators (TLIs) suffer from significant validity problems. In response to such critiques, the World Bank (WB) reformed its Doing Business (DB) legal indicators in 2014. This paper evaluates two important results of this reform: the WB distinguished between the quality and performance (efficiency) of law indicators and also claimed that they are positively correlated. I argue that this distinction is based on two different utilitarian perspectives; therefore, these indicators try to quantify different aspects of laws. However, new empirical tests indicate that they are not correlated. The statistical tests on the DB Resolving Insolvency Indicators do not show any strong correlation, and the case of Turkey's WB-led insolvency-law reform suggests that the developing countries can even incur efficiency losses from legal-quality improvements. Thus, this study demonstrates that the 2014 DB reform reproduced the validity problems inside the new distinctions and connections between its indicators, potentially creating new misconceptions for policy-makers.

In France, judicial expertise operates within a specific institutional framework at the same time as it covers a distinctive community of practitioners called upon for their technical or scientific knowledge to serve justice. Indeed, while experts in the US are selected by the litigants, the French model features judge-appointed experts. This model could offer better guarantee of independence and neutrality, to the point that recent developments in the US suggest the emergence of a new court-appointed expert. What does such an institutional model involve in terms of evidence production? To answer this question, this paper looks at two areas of expertise in France: economic experts and forensic pathologists. Through an ethnography of the co-production of legal evidence, it analyses the black box of the French practices of legal expertise and allows the way in which the institutional context influences the producing of legal evidence, beyond differences between a scalpel and a calculator, to be understood.

In the last four decades, there has been a significant increase in the number and variety of appropriate dispute-resolution (ADR) institutions and processes in Australia as a critical aspect of improved access to justice. Although more people can get assistance to resolve their disputes, the issues of whether this access is shared equally within the community, how the disadvantaged fare in these processes and what type of justice is provided by the various ADR processes are explored. The relevance of legislative objectives of ADR fora and processes to justice outcomes is highlighted. It is argued that ADR processes need to be designed and implemented bearing in mind the type/nature of the dispute, parties involved and availability of resources, and to have an overarching objective of promoting access to justice for users. Additionally, improved access to justice requires ongoing and rigorous evaluation of ADR processes to ascertain whether justice objectives are being achieved.

This paper undertakes a sceptical analysis of the significance for the protection of migrants’ rights represented by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 and the UN Global Compact for Migration (GCM). Despite the positive view taken by many of these frameworks, I argue that, taken together, the SDGs and the GCM represent an acknowledgement of the failure of the international system of human rights protection to deal effectively with the protection of migrants’ rights. With particular reference to the UN Migrant Workers Convention, I argue that adoption of the GCM underscores a decisive shift from the realm of binding international law to soft law for the purposes of dealing with migrants’ rights. While acknowledging some of the signal benefits of this new regime, I highlight some of the many signs suggesting that these twin international developments do not guarantee progress on the road to the protection of migrants’ rights.

This paper examines the key societal developments underpinning the growth of mediation in Singapore with a view to analysing the evolving conceptualisation of justice within mediation. The introduction of mediation corresponded with a shift from adversarial justice to an indigenous form of conciliatory justice, in which a respected mediator played an adviser role for the disputants and was trusted to ensure the fairness of the process. However, this trajectory was tempered by the need to ensure that Singapore mediation practice conformed with international practices concerning the protection of parties’ autonomy. The ambivalence concerning the mediator's role has resulted in uncertainty about whether the mediator bears primary responsibility for ensuring procedural and substantive fairness. The paper discusses the implications of this ambiguity and proposes ways to resolve it. The current phase of professionalisation in Singapore's mediation movement offers the opportune moment to resolve these existing tensions and to crystallise the mediator's role in facilitating access to justice.

Legalised accountability – the definition of torture as an illicit behaviour and the mobilisation of law-enforcement agencies, prosecutorial offices and courts to gather evidence, prosecute and convict torture perpetrators – has become central to anti-torture policies around the world, including Brazil. Based on legal-consciousness scholarship and in-depth interviews, this paper investigates the place and meaning of law in the everyday lives of Brazilian anti-torture activists. Counter-intuitive as it may sound, interviewees articulated an account in which law's authority is largely rejected, while non-legal tools against torture look much more preferable – even if they residually and cynically engage with the law. While exploring the discursive roots of such account, this paper highlights the role of law and justice institutions, particularly those in the criminal justice system, in the of building social support for – or rejection of – the law. These findings add to our knowledge of law's hegemony, while providing valuable insights for future legal-consciousness studies.

The autonomous position of legal professionals is no longer self-evident. Professionals are under increased pressure to reform. This phenomenon is not only true for legal professionals. A broader trend – which is recognised for the medical profession, academic profession and alike – is that paraprofessionals are gaining a more prominent position. In this paper, we focus on the developments in the Dutch public justice system. We conduct a case-study on the role of paraprofessionals in courts and in the public prosecution service – two understudied legal institutions in this regard. By drawing on empirical data unfolding the working routine of the judiciary and the prosecution service, we find two paradigms that define the thinking about professionalism: a traditional ‘pure professional’ paradigm and a new, more hybrid paradigm that includes (policy-based) managerial thinking. The latter appears to be enhanced by a New Public Management (NPM) approach within these institutions. Although we observe resistance among (para)professionals towards professional changes and ambiguity in the relationships between professionals and paraprofessionals, we also observe that managerialism has changed the work processes and the division of labour between professionals and paraprofessionals.

In this contribution, I examine the links between the human rights basis of the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) and its embeddedness in the UN Sustainable Development Agenda 2030. While the GCM grew out of a development framework, it was rapidly incorporated into the UN human rights system. Even during the negotiation of the GCM, human rights took priority over development. The resistance that was manifested against the GCM on its endorsement by the UN General Assembly was directed not against its development links, but rather concerns about its human rights impact. This paper examines the placing of migration in this dual framework and the ways in which outcomes compatible with both are achievable.

To date, in Western jurisdictions, many criminal justice reforms are devised and implemented with a close eye on public opinion. These are typically intended to regain or foster legitimacy. However, within this context, there is no common understanding of this concept. This essay aims to provide such a conceptualisation of legitimacy, to enable a consistent and systematic evaluation of attempts to accommodate public opinion. To this end, five levels of legitimacy research are discussed that could structure evaluations of public-opinion-targeted reforms: (1) the normative dimension, (2) the ‘audiences’ addressed, (3) the purpose of the reforms, (4) trust and distrust, and (5) dialogic, or longitudinal effects. Furthermore, since research departing from these five levels of analysis is likely to result in observations that are, by nature, incommensurable, it is argued that an overall assessment of legitimacy always requires a judgment, rather than mere measurement.

Situated within the larger context of Canadian pipeline decisions, it is argued that pipeline proposals in a geography without pre-existing pipelines are unsuccessful in contrast to proposals repurposing and expanding existing pipelines. The Chippewas of the Thames (the ‘Chippewas’) unsuccessfully opposed Enbridge's expansion, reversal and repurposing to crude oil of the Line 9 pipeline in Ontario, Canada. Analysing the Chippewas’ case within the context of recent oil- and gas-pipeline developments, using a lens of intersectionality focused on identity markers of indigeneity, socio-economic status and geographical location, exposes the naturalised power structures of Canadian law. These structures include the legal institutions of real-property law, Crown ownership of wildlife and fish, implicit ‘standing’ of the economy and assimilation of indigenous rights. Exposing this dichotomy of indigenous rights on paper vs. in practice deepens the consideration of indigenous rights, potentially allowing intersecting oppressions to be addressed.

When mediation places decision-making power in the hands of lay disputants it raises troubling issues. Can justice be delivered without judicial assistance? What is the effect on the legal system? And how should outcomes thus achieved be regarded? Critics have tended to answer negatively, pointing to a range of harms including individual oppression and the vanishing trial. Such views, focusing too narrowly on conformity to legal norms, overlook ordinary people's capacity for justice reasoning. A recent Scottish pilot study of small-claims mediation parties illustrates the richness and complexity of their thinking around whether, and for how much, to settle. This suggests that mediation settlements, rather than representing second-class justice, may enhance the legitimacy of the legal system. Implications for theories of justice are considered.

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration has prompted an intense political debate at both the international and domestic levels. Most controversies focus on its legal stance and highlight the hybrid character of the Compact as a soft-law instrument. While acknowledging the political nature of the Compact, this paper delves into its legal dimensions from the perspective of international law. This inquiry into its normative content discloses three main features: (1) the Compact is not a codification of international legal norms governing migration; it is an instrument of both (2) consolidation and (3) expansion of international law to foster inter-governmental co-operation and promote safe, orderly and regular migration.

I taught torts and legal profession at six US law schools over the course of forty years (1969–2008). This paper describes my efforts to incorporate socio-legal studies and critical legal studies into my teaching and my reflections on how successful this was.

This paper considers a planning dispute that surrounded the construction of a Jewish religious installation (called an eruv) in the public urban space of an Australian suburb. The aim of this case-study is to examine the role of law in regulating Jewish difference – a topic that has to date received little attention in the socio-legal literature concerned with the governance of religious diversity. In analysing residents’ objections to the eruv, the paper explores long-standing anxieties about Jewish particularity in Australia and beyond as they surfaced in opposition to the eruv. It shows how the law continues to exclude certain forms of Jewish difference that are perceived as transgressing dominant religious and racial norms. Moreover, the paper highlights the particular ways in which planning law assigned value to these anxieties and legitimised the marginalisation of Orthodox Jews, emphasising the significance of local law as a site for exclusion and inequality.

Recent decades have seen improvements in our understanding of the gendered dynamics of migration and how they affect women migrant workers. Whilst characterised by precarity, women's labour migration is recognised as contributing to positive developmental outcomes. The full dimensions of these contributions are not yet well understood, but the need to improve the situation of women migrant workers is. Through analysis of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), this paper examines the global development agenda to assess the extent to which it recognises the gendered dimensions of migration and seeks to realise the rights of women migrant workers as development actors. Drawing on content analysis of the SDGs and a review of the GCM, the paper finds that, while their content provides potential for states to strengthen their evidence base and establish progressive policy agendas and practice interventions to realise women migrant workers’ rights, the measures for implementation and monitoring of these frameworks reduce the likelihood of this potential being realised.

Since 1978, we have observed the steady development of institutions, mechanisms and processes of dispute resolution in China. In the last ten years or so, we then noted frequent issuance of new rules and measures as well as revision of existing laws, the promotion of mediation as the preferred method for resolving disputes and, more recently, the promotion of an integrated dispute-resolution system as a national strategy for comprehensive social control (as well as for resolving disputes), in the name of reforming and strengthening ‘the Mechanism for Pluralist Dispute Resolution’. Careful examination of these latest developments suggests that fundamental changes are taking place that may potentially alter the course of the development of the Chinese dispute-resolution system. These developments are the focus of this paper with an aim to ascertain the nature of the developments and their future direction or directions.