Best Practices for an Affordable and Sustainable Dispute System: A Toolbox for Microjustice

In this paper, we will concentrate on the needs for protection in disputes. Socio-legal research has rendered a rather precise picture of the most important types of conflicts that individuals experience (see Barendrecht, Kamminga et al. 2008 for a literature review). According to legal needs surveys, personal security in relation to outsiders and government (human rights protection) presents the most urgent category of problems. After this comes the core business of any dispute system: property conflicts and issues related to land and housing, problems between employer and employee, family problems, neighbor issues, and business conflicts. These disputes are typically relational in nature. They take place within the relationships in which people invest most, which also creates dependence. Here, dispute systems are more or less inevitable, because long term relationships have to cope with change in unexpected directions (Barendrecht 2008). Then there are the less urgent (but more frequent) consumer problems, debt collection issues, and problems related to access to essential government services. Here the focus is more on enforcement of rights and obligations that are defined beforehand (Barendrecht 2008). In a dispute there is at least one person who wants a change in the status quo, a person who wants access to justice. This plaintiff wants to achieve something in relation to at least one other person, the defendant. The dispute system is the setting he has access to for seeking a solution to the dispute. Dispute systems may consist of formal elements such as courts or other neutrals, legal procedures, and legal services. Informal systems may include alternative dispute resolution (ADR) services such as mediation, but also supervision by people in a more or less hierarchical position (bosses, parents, teachers, clerics, village elders) and procedures before a tribunal appointed within a community.