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Deborah Charles Publications

The Liverpool Law Review

A Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Vol. XIX no.1 (1997)

Special Issue:

"Civil Justice Reform"

edited by HHJ Ian Campbell

Consolidated abstracts

The Rt. Hon.The Lord Woolf, Foreword (3)

HHJ Ian Campbell, Introduction (5-8) (full text here)

David White and Patrick Cassan, "Woolf Meets the Cockerel" (9-28)

District Judge Gordon Ashton, "Equal Access to Justice", The Liverpool Law Review Vol. xix no.1 (1997), 29-36. - This article considers the special needs of people with disabilities when they encounter the civil justice system, and the manner in which the Woolf Reforms could assist them. Lawyers have been relied upon to compensate for their inadequacies but with cut backs in legal aid this can no longer be assured. They can find themselves encountering the ultimate handicap - lack of access to justice ... If the needs of disabled people are not met the courts could find themselves in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The court should be under a duty to ascertain if a party has a physical or mental impairment which substantially affects ability to participate in the proceedings, and to compensate for this ... Some people are incapable by reason of mental disorder of managing and administering their property and affairs. Law Commission report Mental Incapacity (No. 231 dated February 1995) makes recommendations as to decision-making and includes a draft Bill. The Law Society and British Medical Association have produced joint guidance in Assessment of Mental Capacity (1996). ... When an individual is incapable of conducting litigation (a 'patient') it is necessary for a representative to act: a next friend or guardian ad litem. The five existing sets of rules (High Court, county court, family proceedings, insolvency and Court of Protection) are inconsistent. The new Civil Procedure Rules should be constructed from scratch. Gordon Ashton is author of Mental Handicap and the Law (Sweet & Maxwell), Elderly People and the Law (Butterworths) and The Elderly Client Handbook (The Law Society). e-mail: ashton@law.edi.co.uk

HHJ David Marshall Evans, "Access To Justice", The Liverpool Law Review xix/1 (1997), 37-45: The author stresses the importance of the civil justice system and applauds the intentions of the Woolf report. He fears that implementation will be selective and the selection heavily influenced by the costs of individual proposals. He queries whether the framework of the recommendations is as radical as it at first appears, and whether the central proposals for fast-track cases may not increase the risk of injustice. He suggests that the changes to the system of costs will have complex and unforeseeable effects, and that the new unified rules will take a long time to settle down with much procedural manoeuvring in the course of the process.

HHJ Michael Kershaw, "From Beeching to Woolf", The Liverpool Law Review xix/1 (1997), 47-51: This paper argues that the Woolf reforms are part of single process which started a quarter of a century ago and that the Judicature Acts 1873 and 1875 were the beginning of a similar long process of reform in the latter part of the last century. It shows that one of the reforms of the last century has been re-used (the Commercial Court and mercantile lists) and that another (licensed conveyancers) has been reversed in a way which suggests that the present era of reform may not be over for the legal profession.

Charles N Stoddart, "Civil Procedure: Can The Scots Learn From Woolf?", The Liverpool Law Review xix/1 (1997), 53-65: This article, written by a Scottish sheriff, looks from a Scottish perspective at three of the problems highlighted by the Woolf survey of civil justice in England and Wales: the need for written pleadings; problems of case management; and the place for Information Technology in the Scottish civil courts. As for the first, the author questions the need to keep the traditional Scottish system in the light of the requirements of speedy and affordable justice; he concludes that any structured system of case management in civil cases will only succeed if it is carefully targeted; and he bemoans the absence of an integrated system of Information Technology in Scottish courts. He concludes that urgent action is necessary in all three areas, lest litigants turn away from the courts to use other techniques of dispute resolution.

Jürgen Beier, "The Woolf Report and German Civil Procedure", The Liverpool Law Review Vol. xix no.1 (1997), 67-88. - There have always been reasons for neighbouring (and sometimes distant) countries to examine each other's legal systems. Membership of the European Union gives to the mutual examination of members' systems a particular significance, bearing in mind the increasing role of EC law throughout the Union, and of those forces tending towards the convergence of legal systems within the Union. This article sees Lord Woolf's report on "Access to Justice" as part of this broader European process, cross-referring as it does to certain details of German law and of other systems foreign to England and Wales, but in turn forming part of the general European legal culture which those responsible for the legal systems of the various member states would be neglectful to ignore. As to Germany on the one hand and England and Wales on the other, many common problems and some common solutions are observed, notwithstanding the very distinct judicial traditions concerned. e-mail: pamadajo@inanimus.in-berlin.de

Masaaki Kondo, "Reform of Civil Litigation - Some Thoughts from Japan, Including a Reflection upon the Reforms Proposed for England and Wales by Lord Woolf" (89-107)

Irene Loh, Review of I. Stevens, Constitutional and Administrative Law (109-111)

This issue is available as a single issue (price: £19.95). For an order form, click here

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