Briggs’ Online Court and the Need for a Paradigm Shift

This paper argues that the proposed Online Court is likely to suffer from various limitations if assessed within the current paradigm—that courts should never willfully compromise the quality of their judgments. The proposed Stage 3 could he understood as an invitation for a paradigm shift. At least in times of crisis, a degree of compromise over the courts ability to arrive at correct judgments, in exchange for faster and less costly proceedings, is a legitimate trade-off—not the retreat into ‘second-class justice’ that critics of Briggs’ Interim Report alleged. Thus, if the application of Stage 3, with its radical departure from convention, would be limited to simple and straightforward cases, the Briggs reform would be just another instalment in judicial adaptation, which would ease some pain without bringing about a root treatment that is long overdue.