Digital Justice: Technology and the Internet of Disputes - Softcover

Katsh, Ethan; Rabinovich-Einy, Orna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0190675675 ISBN 13: 9780190675677

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2017

Synopsis

Improving access to justice has been an ongoing process, and on-demand justice should be a natural part of our increasingly on-demand society. What can we do for example when Facebook blocks our account, we're harassed on Twitter, discover that our credit report contains errors, or receive a negative review on Airbnb? How do we effectively resolve these and other such issues?

Digital Justice introduces the reader to new technological tools to resolve and prevent disputes bringing dispute resolution to cyberspace, where those who would never look to a court for assistance can find help for instance via a smartphone. The authors focus particular attention on five areas that have seen great innovation as well as large volumes of disputes: ecommerce, healthcare, social media, labor, and the courts. As conflicts escalate with the increase in innovation, the authors emphasize the need for new dispute resolution processes and new ways to avoid disputes, something that has been ignored by those seeking to improve access to justice in the past.

About this title

Review

Digital Justice is a must read for anyone who wants to know about how our lives are now affected by the real conflicts produced on the Internet. This book brilliantly examines how technology can be harnessed to prevent, resolve, and also produce conflict in ecommerce, healthcare, social relationships, work, and the legal system itself, illuminating the differences between the potential of digital justice and the concerns of digital injustice. (Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science, University of California Irvine and Georgetown University Law Center)

Digital Justice is the perfect guide to understanding the future of access to justice. The future is digital, not imposing courthouses. This book provides a bold and creative vision of why we need new technology-supported dispute resolution institutions. (Colin Rule, Co-Founder and Chairman of Modria.com)

Katsh and Rabinovich-Einy explain how technology makes disputes online more likely to occur, and they identify ways in which that can change - indeed, technology can be used to prevent online disagreements in the first place. This book provides a roadmap for a better online experience. It gives us hope that going online need not entail going downhill. (Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law and Professor of Computer Science, Harvard University)

We need an accessible and reasonably priced system for all and I have found no more promising option for that future than that offered by various types of Online Dispute Resolution. Lawyers should surely be the pioneers in upgrading justice rather than standing in the way of processes that, as Ethan and Orna so compellingly show, are great improvements on what we have today. I wish this work the very great success that it deserves. (From the Foreword) (Richard Susskind, President, Society for Computers and Law, IT Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales)

[This] once-in-a-decade book... is in equal parts descriptive, analytical and visionary. While [it] is certainly of great importance to anyone dealing in conflict engagement and resolution, its implications range far beyond this field; anyone in the fields of law, management, e-commerce, social media, customer relations, internet innovation, and public policy, would do well to read this book. Having finished the book, I can't wait for the sequel to come out (or, in academic terms, a second edition). Change happens much faster than it used to; in a few short years, many of the projects described in the book will have come to fruition and provide data, and new horizons for Digital Justice will have emerged as innovations in technology and interaction continue to result in conflict and problems requiring solutions. (Professor Noam Ebner, Creighton University, Werner Institute for Negotiation & Conflict Resolution)

The short message is: read this book... it is an invaluable account of the history of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) authored, in part, by Professor Katsch, one of the great granddaddies of the subject from its beginnings with e-Bay. (Roger Smith, Law, Tech, & A2J)

About the Author

Ethan Katsh is Professor Emeritus of Legal Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Director, National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution. He is one of the founders of the field of Online Dispute Resolution and has published widely in the law and technology and dispute resolution fields. He authored Law in a Digital World (Oxford, 1995); The Electronic Media and the Transformation of Law (Oxford, 1989); Online Dispute Resolution: Resolving Conflicts in Cyberspace (Co-authored with Janet Rifkin, 2001). Orna Rabinovich-Einy is an associate professor (senior lecturer) at the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa. Her areas of expertise are alternative dispute resolution, online dispute resolution, and civil procedure, with research focusing on the relationship between formal and informal justice systems, dispute resolution system design and the impact of technology on dispute resolution.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0190675675
• ISBN 13: 9780190675677
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 260