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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of recent civil justice reforms in five jurisdictions including Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the UK and Canada on the resolution of civil and commercial disputes.

The study, drawing on a comparative cross‐jurisdictional methodology, reviews the scope and nature of such reforms and examines lessons learned regarding implementation.

The findings of the research indicate that such reforms are most effective where regular evaluation to fine‐tune mediation rules occurs concurrently and in conjunction with the implementation of such reforms.

The limitation of this research is that it is confined to already existing court case statistics, judicial commentaries and reviews of the five selected jurisdictions.

The practical implications of the study find that in general, civil justice reforms have made some progress in achieving the aims of encouraging cost‐effective, expeditious and amicable case handling within the civil justice system.

The paper contributes to a global analysis of effective approaches to civil justice reform and in particular reforms in mediated case handling.

The Scottish civil justice system is undergoing its most substantive transformation in over 150 years. This reformation will create new judicial bodies, alter the jurisdictional reach of courts, and drastically unsettle what has been, up to now, a highly stable institutional field. These changes have caused pronounced threats to the status of different groups of actors in the field. Our work examines the impact of these threats, and the varying responses among groups of professional actors. In so doing, we detail how intra-professional status differences and uncertainty hindered attempts to maintain threatened institutions.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

This paper considers the issues facing banks who become engaged in litigation and the strategies and procedures available to obtain the most effective solutions. How these will be affected by the reforms in civil procedure proposed by Lord Woolf are also discussed.

Examines access to justice, within the Australian context of an adversarial system, from a consumer’s perspective. It is argued that the current system of justice represents the most conservative element of Australian society and that the courtroom discourse structure and the legal professional code of practice do little to ensure access to justice or quality of service. Inequality in communication and in the distribution of wealth, affecting all spheres of social life, especially the legal system, pose major barriers to access to justice. Stemming from these two principal barriers to equality in access to justice, a multitude of other barriers are perceived to exist. These perceived barriers are magnified by various platforms of social and political analysis as well as historical, contextual factors and administrative action. Attention is drawn to the emerging need for a continuous alignment of administrative and justice systems with democratic justice principles and global social changes.

Who is ultimately responsible for the harms that befall us? Corporations who make dangerous products, or the consumers who use them? The answer to this question has a profound impact on how personal injury lawyers screen products liability cases. In this chapter, I analyze results from an experimental vignette study in which 83 lawyers were asked to evaluate a hypothetical products liability case. Half of the lawyers practice in states considered to be difficult jurisdictions for the practice of personal injury law due to tort reform and conservative political climates (Texas and Colorado), while the other half work in states that have been relatively unaffected by tort reform and are considered to be more “plaintiff friendly” (Pennsylvania and Massachusetts). While lawyers in reform states and non-reform states were equally likely to accept the hypothetical case with which they were presented, they approached the case in different ways, used different theories, and made different arguments in order to justify their acceptance of the case. Lawyers in states with tort reform were most likely to accept the case when they focused on the issue of corporate social responsibility – that is, what the defendant did wrong, how they violated the rules, and how they could have prevented the injury in question. Lawyers in non-reform states, however, were most likely to accept the case when they believed that jurors would feel sorry for the injured child and not find their client at fault for the injury.

The purpose of this study is to explore possible factors leading to a successful mediation in Chinese mediation shows. In China, media always play an indispensable role in information dissemination, morality advocacy and policy explanation.

This paper employed content analysis of 166 episodes of one representative mediation show, Gold Medal Mediation, and regression technique in data analysis.

Results of ordinal regression suggested that “secret talking”, rather than transparency, between disputants had significant influence on successful mediation. Function of mediators is limited in reaching full mediation. The effective factors leading to full mediation include compromise of rights, secret talking, attitude of the observer cohort. It suggests that the role of mediator is limited, rather than being over-exaggerated, in successful mediation. The successful mediation is largely dependent on disputants’ motivations. Additionally, “compromise of rights” by disputants is a key factor in solving disputes.

Findings of this study revealed the role of Chinese mediation shows in propagating mediation in contemporary Chinese society and supporting upheld morality values. Due to the nature of the chosen mediation show, some disputes take more than one episode to solve. However, this study looks at each episode without considering the integrity of the dispute. That is, if the disputes take two episodes, the coder codes the two episodes as two separate disputes instead of looking at it as one dispute.

By exploring various aspects of mediations shows, including the role of mediators, disputants and a cohort of observers, this study can both explicitly show predicted factors to successful mediations on the shows, and can implicitly examine the power and perceived justification of mediation in contemporary China via media.

This purpose of this paper is to critically examine jurisprudentially the current judicial and academic scepticism that exists in some quarters with regard to compulsory mediation primarily from the context of England and Wales. In doing so, it seeks to respond to well-articulated and established concerns with regard to any compulsion in mediation as outlined by Hazel Genn among others as well as some senior members of the judiciary.

This paper seeks to critically examine jurisprudentially the current judicial and academic scepticism that exists in some quarters with regard to compulsory mediation primarily from the context of England and Wales. In doing so, it seeks to respond to well-articulated and established concerns with regard to any compulsion in mediation as outlined by Hazel Genn among others as well as some senior members of the judiciary.

This paper argues that the worries concerning compulsory mediation are unnecessary as they are based on a narrow reading of Article 6 rights, one not shared by many European lawyers, in particular the view taken by them with regards to proportionality. It further argues that compulsory mediation can be an appropriate, proportionate method of dispute resolution in some cases recognising that mediation is not a bar per se to subsequent litigation.

Mediation is an important topic in contemporary law. The theoretical and jurisprudential aspects of mediation have as yet been underdeveloped. This paper is a contribution to this developing debate.

This paper aims to analyse the different requirements of Practice Direction 15.10 (which governs the process of family mediation in Hong Kong) and Practice Direction 31 (which governs the process of general mediation in Hong Kong), and to highlight the need to incorporate the spirit of family mediation into legislation to better protect children’s interest in a family dispute.

The paper reviews and compares the content on Practice Direction 15.10 and Practice Direction 31 issued by Chief Justice of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal, and adopts interpretative and analytical approaches to evaluate their impact.

In an effort to promote parental responsibility-based negotiation in divorce proceeding, a missed opportunity in enacting the Children Proceedings (Parental Responsibility) Bill in 2015 might be a blessing in disguise as it offers another chance for policy makers to consider how to direct parties to negotiate and communicate, to seek and benefit from professional guidance on a continuous basis, and to seek alternative channels to resolve disputes other than the court room. The policy and the law advocating a switch from a “rights-based” to “responsibility-based” approach in handling children’s matters should be revisited by incorporating the spirit of family mediation into legislation.

Analyses are conducted through direct contextual review and documentary research. This paper conducts literal analysis of court guidance and unveils policy implications for the general public. It would be of interest to judicial officers, scholars and government officials concerning children’s rights and parental responsibility in divorce proceedings.