Tilburg Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Civil Law and Conflict Resolution Systems

The aim of the project:

Every day millions of people need justice. Buyers of defective goods or faulty services seek their rights. Employees attempt to protect against unfair dismissal or discriminatory treatment at work. Victims of personal injuries or crimes seek restoration of the suffered damages. The aim of the Measuring Access to Justice Project is to develop a valid and reliable methodology for registering the experiences with the paths to justice.

The project seeks to develop a balanced measurement tool ' one which accounts for a broad range of perceptions and attitudes on a path to justice. Three main indicators summarise the experiences of the users:

• The costs of the paths of justice;
• The quality of the procedure;
• The quality of the outcome.

Research Questions:

• How to operationalise the three indicators with sufficient degree of validity, reliability and multi-cultural implication?
• What are the most appropriate methods and approaches to measure the three indicators?
• How to achieve comparability among different paths to justice?
• How to compute an index of access to justice?

Commisioner of the project:
The Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law
Tilburg University
Utrecht University

Starting date of the project:
January 2007

Projectmanager:
Dr. M.A. (Martin) Gramatikov

Researchers:
Prof. J.M. (Maurits) Barendrecht, Prof. I. (Ivo) Giesen, Dr. M.A. (Martin) Gramatikov, S. (Stéphanie) van Gulijk, Y.P. (Peter) Kamminga, Drs. L. (Laura) Klaming, Drs. M.J.H. (Malini) Laxminarayan, J.H.(Jin Ho) Verdonschot, C.M.C. (Corry) van Zeeland.

Download:
Report for the current status of the project

Project website:
http://www.measuringaccesstojustice.com/