Having drawn attention to the social and economic importance of civil justice, this chapter considers the surprising coincidence during the past decade of worldwide ‘crises’ in civil justice. It examines the reform programmes put in place around the world – in response to these perceived crises and access to justice concerns – and discusses the interesting disconnection of these reviews and reforms from any empirical understanding about access to justice. The chapter concludes with a discussion of recent comparative evidence about the responsiveness of the civil justice system to the needs of the public and a reflection on the question of how much civil justice we need and how much we can afford to forego in light of the purposes of civil justice.

Civil justice in crisis around the world

If the significance of civil justice to governments around the world were to be judged merely by the number and tonnage of review reports, then clearly it is very significant indeed. The last decade has seen a global explosion of reviews, analyses and reforms of civil justice systems. Although the English civil justice system has been the subject of complaint and report at least since the middle of the nineteenth century, the fundamental review of English civil justice undertaken by Lord Woolf during 1994–6 has to be viewed in that wider context. It was only one of a number of similar reviews and reform programmes that started in California and Australia, were repeated in several Australian states and then seemed to spread around the world to New Zealand, several provinces in Canada, Hong Kong and Scotland. All were apparently undertaken in response to existing or impending crises in civil justice. Indeed, a collection of scholarly papers published in 1999 edited by Adrian Zuckerman was dramatically entitled Civil Justice in Crisis.