Current Socio-Legal Perspectives on Dispute Resolution

Abstract

In recent years, there were increasing interests in quantitative survey research on experiences of legal problems and access to justice in an unprecedented number of countries. Such survey research was initially conducted in the U.K. and the U.S. and later in Canada, New Zealand and Australia, countries with the Anglo-American legal tradition. However, a similar survey was recently carried out in the Netherlands, Japan and Hong Kong, countries of the Civil Law tradition, some of them with Asian social background. Now we have fantastic opportunities for comparative studies of civil disputes and dispute handling behavior among countries with different socio-legal backgrounds. Drawing upon these survey data, we discussed on how experiences of legal problems and occurrences of disputes differ among countries, how legal machineries are used or not used to resolve disputes, how levels of satisfaction with outcomes differ, and research designs and quantitative analytical methods for future surveys.

Keywords: International Arbitration, Mediation, Comparative Law, Dispute resolution