Law Commons^™

Designing Responsive Legal Systems: A Comparative Study, Nofit Amir, Michal Alberstein

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

The drive for efficiency has caused many legal systems to redesign themselves, creating multiple paths for dispute resolution and incorporating settlement-promoting tools into the judicial role. However, as this study shows, legal systems have taken divergent approaches as they redesign themselves to accommodate settlement practices, leading to widely disparate results. This study probes the paths taken by three countries’ legal systems—England and Wales (common law), Israel (mixed), and Italy (continental law)—drawing on court docket analyses, courtroom observations, and interviews with judges in the three legal systems. It uncovers central points of divergence—emphasized stage of dispute resolution, separation vs. combination of …