Marco Velicogna | Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) (original) (raw)
Papers by Marco Velicogna
Oñati Socio-Legal Series
We live in an increasingly digitally mediated, platform-based environment characterised by remote... more We live in an increasingly digitally mediated, platform-based environment characterised by remote working, schooling, shopping, and socialising, where national borders blur and geographical location importance decreases. One of the main effects of this transformation is the growing relevance of cross-border (actual and potential) disputes and, therefore, the need for adequate means to address and resolve them. Geographically bounded forms of dispute resolution based on national justice systems, courts, and independent judges have shown their limits to face the new challenge. Building on Canguilhem’s work on the norm, normal and pathological concepts, the paper explores the European Union’s attempt to provide adequate cross-border dispute resolution mechanisms through traditional justice means, showing achieved results and limits. The paper then explores the increasing role of dispute resolution mechanisms integrated into platforms, such as Amazon, eBay and Booking, that bring togeth...
Laws
An effective legal framework for judicial cooperation in the field of the service of documents is... more An effective legal framework for judicial cooperation in the field of the service of documents is a keystone for the effective functioning of the area of freedom, security and justice, as referred to in the Treaty on the EU. In particular, the proper service of a claim to the addressee is a necessary step for starting a proceeding and, simultaneously, an essential requirement for exercising the right of defence. The EU has adopted specific provisions to remodel the traditional channel of documents’ transmission with smoother solutions that assist cross-border judicial proceedings. Despite this, the European service procedure is not that straightforward and can still be very complex for most users, causing additional costs and legal uncertainty. Against this background, this article explores how the cross-border service of documents works in practice. It presents the findings resulting from empirical exploratory research carried out in Italy to assess the concrete use and usability o...
Laws, 2022
An effective legal framework for judicial cooperation in the field of the service of documents is... more An effective legal framework for judicial cooperation in the field of the service of documents is a keystone for the effective functioning of the area of freedom, security and justice, as referred to in the Treaty on the EU. In particular, the proper service of a claim to the addressee is a necessary step for starting a proceeding and, simultaneously, an essential requirement for exercising the right of defence. The EU has adopted specific provisions to remodel the traditional channel of documents’ transmission with smoother solutions that assist cross-border judicial proceedings. Despite this, the European service procedure is not that straightforward and can still be very complex for most users, causing additional costs and legal uncertainty. Against this background, this article explores how the cross-border service of documents works in practice. It presents the findings resulting from empirical exploratory research carried out in Italy to assess the concrete use and usability of the European rules adopted to simplify, speed up and reduce the costs of cross-border service of judicial and extrajudicial documents in civil and commercial matters, also in the view to support a possible digitalisation of the procedure. Building on empirical data, the paper brings to light the existing hiatus between the service procedure ‘on the books’ and the reality of how the relevant provisions are applied daily, so as to provide solid ground for reflecting on the current situation and on the impact that the recast Regulation 2020/1784/EU, which took effect in July 2022, will have to the supranational system of cross-border service of documents, in particular concerning the potential of the use of ICT to support it
From common rules to best practices in European Civil Procedure, 2017
This paper is the result of a long chain of working activities and cooperation which arose out of... more This paper is the result of a long chain of working activities and cooperation which arose out of a problem: Cross-border legal procedures in civil matters are not producing the expected results regardless of all ejustice investments done so far. The aim of this present work is to explore how existing technical and legal components and those under development could be used or reinvented to better address the problem. The question of how cross-border e-justice service provision should proceed will also be addressed. This paper has been produced with the financial support of the Justice Programme of the European Union (API for Justice project JUST/2014/JACC/AG/E-JU/6965). The contents of this paper are the sole responsibility of Ernst Steigenga and Marco Velicogna, and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Commission.
Keynote address @ ‘The role of courts and access to justice in the digital era’ Conference, Radbo... more Keynote address @ ‘The role of courts and access to justice in the digital era’
Conference, Radboud University, 9-10 June 2022
From common rules to best practices in European Civil Procedure, 2017
International E-Government Development, 2017
The aim of this chapter is to shed some light on the Information and Communication Technologies (... more The aim of this chapter is to shed some light on the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) development and implementation in the justice domain (the so-called e-Justice), and to glance at the key elements of this emerging phenomenon, building on the European Union experience at national and Community level. Although ICTs are increasingly at the core of the functioning of the justice service provision in modern democracies, their implementation and deployment, and the complex intertwining between law, technology and organizations, which characterize e-Justice experiences, remains poorly understood. The analysis of concrete e-Justice cases allows clarification of some of the practical implications of different experiences, providing useful indications of the elements which have made feasible the development of effective e-Justice systems.
European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities, 2019
This Special Issue of the European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities (EQPAM) prese... more This Special Issue of the European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities (EQPAM) presents a collection of papers contributing to the understanding of the increasingly relevant topic of legal requirements analysis and engineering in complex sociotechnical contexts, with an eye to the complex intertwining between law and technological systems development and implementation for the public service provision.
Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 2021
The number of cases is measured through a broad range of quantitative variables used in various s... more The number of cases is measured through a broad range of quantitative variables used in various studies and policy papers as key indicators of the volume of activity of national courts. Additionally, these variables, together with other data (e.g. time needed to resolve a case, number of judges, etc.) are part of a broader discourse on the efficiency of justice systems. However, such discourse can be problematic when data is not actually comparable. To raise the attention on this very relevant but poorly explored topic, this paper analyses the comparability of the caseload data by focusing on apparently simple categories like civil and commercial litigious or non-litigious cases and administrative cases. The EU Justice Scoreboard and CEPEJ data and national case definitions in France, Italy, and Romania are used to assess the most relevant justice EU datasets. The findings point towards significant differences between analysed systems that suggest extreme caution should be exercised...
Public Administration and Information Technology, 2019
The case of the Digital Service Infrastructure, developed by the European Union and its Member St... more The case of the Digital Service Infrastructure, developed by the European Union and its Member States to enable the deployment of trans-European digital judicial services, provides the occasion to investigate from a theoretical and empirical perspective the complex features that pertain the creation of the infrastructures that enable the rise of smart cities. The case explores the heterogeneous nature and emergent, non-linear evolution of large-scale information infrastructures. It helps develop a better understanding of the infrastructural components and dynamics that allow to integrate fast evolving technology into everyday people living environment providing new and smart services and to foster public value creation in Smart Cities. Finally, it exposes the relevance of legal components, helping reflecting on their role in addition to that of the technological, human and governance ones already identified by the smart cities literature.
European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities, 2019
In the last 30 years, the use of ICT spread into the justice sector with the aim of improving per... more In the last 30 years, the use of ICT spread into the justice sector with the aim of improving performances and reducing costs. While the justice domain has many distinctive features that makes ICT development and deployment particularly complex compared to other domains, design techniques and methods that proved to be successful in the broader ICT world, have been more and more introduced and tested in this difficult environment. This paper focuses on Business and Process Modelling (BPM) methodology, as a way to navigate the legal, organizational and social complexity of developing e-Justice services. First born for the analysis and improvement of private business processes through the use of graphical representations, the methodology has been largely utilized also for software design in complex organizations. After introducing the main literature on the BPM, we present the case of e-CODEX EU co-funded project, which developed an e-delivery platform to allow secure cross border exchange of judicial documents. The analysis allows grasping some of the strengths and limits of this method, and to learn important lessons on the relationship between BPMs' use and the legal performativity of ejustice.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017
The paper discusses the consistency, reliability, and compatibility of the data set and the appro... more The paper discusses the consistency, reliability, and compatibility of the data set and the appropriateness of indicators used by the EU Justice Scoreboard to assess the efficiency of European justice systems. The EU Commission has introduced the Justice Scoreboard as a tool providing objective, reliable, and comparable data on the functioning of the justice systems of all Member States (EU Commission 2013, p.3). This instrument is formally directed toward strengthening the rule of law, the functioning of national justice systems, and upholding more effective justice. The tool identifies the comparison of the efficiency of Member States justice systems and of other variables as specific means to reach such objectives. This paper analyses conceptual flaws and data quality problems, which undermine the use of the tool. From a conceptual perspective, the study makes clear that caseload data are used to measure workload. Furthermore, the Scoreboard uses the numbers of cases (incoming, pending and resolved) and indicators of effectiveness like clearance rate and length of proceedings to measure the efficiency of justice systems. The assessment of how Member States count apparently simple categories of cases as administrative and litigious or non-litigious civil and commercial cases shows crosscountry inconsistencies that make a crosscountry comparison at least problematic. While suggesting some clear actions to improve the flaws, the paper advice to take an extremely cautious approach in using such indicators for comparative purposes in the academic debate and policy-making. SUMMARY: I. Introduction-II. Methodology-2.1. The Scoreboard's data eco system-2.2 The subset of Scoreboard's data analysed in the research-2.3. Data consistency check: countries selection-2.4. Data consistency check: selecting variables-III. Evolution of the Scoreboard and CEPEJ data-3.1. Evolution of the CEPEJ data-3.2. Evolution of the Scoreboard-IV. Conceptual matters-significance of terminology and definitions-4.1. Assessment of conceptual consistency: the question of efficiency-4.2. Assessment of Caseload or Workload?-4.3 Counting the cases: assessing the case flow-V. Number of cases: a journey in search of consistency and comparabilità-5.1 Case definition and case typology-5.2 Data inconsistency: identifying the causes in the CEPEJ Report-5.3 * This paper has been selected to be presented at the XXIV Biennial Colloquium of the Italian Association of Comparative Law held at the Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa-Napoli, June 15-17 2017. The Editorial Board of the Comparative Law Review decided to publish it relying on the double-blind Peer Review made by the Scientific Commitee of the conference.
In the last 25 years, the introduction of ICT has been one of the main innovation drives and one ... more In the last 25 years, the introduction of ICT has been one of the main innovation drives and one of the main challenges of Justice systems all around the world. The idea is that, when properly linked to the automation and redesign of court procedures and practices, and when properly used to support the communication between courts and parties, ICT can be used to enhance efficiency, access, timeliness, transparency and accountability, thus helping the judiciaries to provide adequate services. In many countries, statutory reforms have been introduced to allow the use and the exchange of electronic data and documents within national judicial systems and ICT infrastructures, applications and services have been introduced. The e-CODEX project can be conceived as the next step, created to interconnect and make interoperable the e-justice systems developed so far within Europe and to allow the cross-border provision of e-Justice services. This paper provides a general overview of e-CODEX p...
The raise of computational power, the boost of electronic data storage capabilities, and the grow... more The raise of computational power, the boost of electronic data storage capabilities, and the growing ubiquitousness of the Internet facilitate the collection of legal information and increases its availability for stakeholders. In this context, EU institutions and key stakeholders are seeking to support initiatives that provide access to legislation and case law. This is considered paramount for economic activities, facilitating access to justice, and upholding the rule of law. This Chapter investigates existing electronic databases created to disseminate case law information on the application of EU judicial procedures and explores these databases ability to improve the application of European procedural instruments, forwarding their use and the creation of a common legal understanding. The analysis addresses also the possibilities opened by e-CODEX to integrated cross-national legal database supported by technology developments. The e-CODEX handled cross-border judicial procedures...
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020
Free movement of people, goods, services, and capital in Europe requires well-functioning cross-b... more Free movement of people, goods, services, and capital in Europe requires well-functioning cross-border dispute resolution mechanisms. Many initiatives have been taken over time by the EU institutions and Member States, both introducing legal instruments and developing information and e-justice technologies to support cross-border judicial litigation and cooperation. Unfortunately, the results so far achieved do not seem to be adequate to the needs of our increasingly interconnected society. Adding to this, the first wave of COVID-19 emergency measures brought court-based dispute resolution to a grinding halt. All around Europe, court buildings have been closed to the public, hearings suspended, and only emergency cases carried out. Some hope though seems to come from this bleak moment. The breakdown of existing practices, and the need to ensure the justice service provision required for our societies' functioning, resulted in many local and national initiatives to reconfigure the justice service. It provided the occasion to experiment with remote justice service provision and explore possibilities to reconfigure technologies and tools, which in many cases had been available for years, to permit remote working, hearings and legal communication. While most of the experiences have been carried out within the national boundaries, they provide the occasion for rethinking cross-border judicial procedures outside their traditional schemas. Building on this, taking stock of pre-COVID-19 EU cross border judicial services situation, this paper explores EU Member States e-justice emergency measures and attempts to stimulate the discussion on their potential for innovation in cross border judicial proceedings.
Ciências e Políticas Públicas / Public Sciences & Policies, 2019
The latest Multiannual European e-Justice Action Plan (2014-2018) embraced e-CODEX as the solutio... more The latest Multiannual European e-Justice Action Plan (2014-2018) embraced e-CODEX as the solution for achieving cross-border judicial cooperation by facilitating the digital exchange of case related data. Since the start of the project in December 2010, e-CODEX has transformed from a ambitious project to an operational Digital Service Infrastructure (DSI) in the judicial domain. Currently, the focus lies on the transition of the e-CODEX The work reported in this document has been part of the collaboration within the European Me-CODEX project, co-financed by the Justice Programme. While this work aims to provide input and support the ongoing discussions on e-CODEX sustainability and future governance, the opinions expressed here solely express the views of the authors.
Social Science Computer Review, 2018
This article explores the concept of open justice in the context of European Union (EU) cross-bor... more This article explores the concept of open justice in the context of European Union (EU) cross-border litigation and focusing on the e-justice dimension. It does it looking both at the open justice principle coming from the legal tradition and at the new ideas coming from the open government discourse. More in detail, the article investigates the attempt to create an open area of justice in Europe through the development and implementation of an European Justice Digital Service Infrastructure and the opening of such infrastructure to users and service providers. It is a development and implementation effort, which builds on the EU’s multilevel legal frameworks, which uses available technological innovations, which responds to the economic needs and challenges of an EU without internal borders, and which result should be capable of being embedded in the existing cultural communities. EU Member States (MSs) have developed such infrastructure and tested it successfully. Currently, EU in...
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015
is a researcher at the Research Institute on Judicial Systems of the National Research Council of... more is a researcher at the Research Institute on Judicial Systems of the National Research Council of Italy. His main research interests are judicial administration, comparative judicial systems, court technology, information infrastructures, evaluation, organizational change and the management of innovation. He participated in a number of national and international research projects, and played a key role in the e-CODEX EU Large Scale Pilot project. He is currently the principal investigator of the Pro-CODEX project. He served as a consultant and collaborated with the Italian Ministry of Justice and several international institutions (including the CoE, OSCE, UN and Worldbank) and worked as an advisor in judicial reform initiatives in several countries.
Informatics, 2017
At the EU level, an increasing number of resources are being invested in an attempt to provide be... more At the EU level, an increasing number of resources are being invested in an attempt to provide better public services through the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). While new tools are being designed and implemented, a shift from 'traditional' technologies that must be used to provide services to more interactive 'smart' technologies is beginning to take place. At the same time, an adequate understanding of the implications of this shift is still missing. This paper focuses on the EU e-Justice experience with the 'API-for-Justice' project, which investigates the challenges of opening up the European e-Justice Digital Service Infrastructure to external service providers by means of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). In particular, the exploration of potential services that can be provided by third parties through APIs for Justice shows the potential for a radical redesign of the justice service provision, where, for example, justice services are not requested by the party but are proposed or initiated by smart components of the infrastructure on the basis of inputs from the environment. In this perspective, smart technology research and, in particular, Brenner (2007)'s discussion on law and smart technology help to uncover the still unclear dynamics of change that characterize one of the key pillars of modern society: justice.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016
This paper investigates the e-Justice design and implementation experience taking place at EU lev... more This paper investigates the e-Justice design and implementation experience taking place at EU level for the provision of e-Justice cross border judicial services through the complex theory lenses.
Oñati Socio-Legal Series
We live in an increasingly digitally mediated, platform-based environment characterised by remote... more We live in an increasingly digitally mediated, platform-based environment characterised by remote working, schooling, shopping, and socialising, where national borders blur and geographical location importance decreases. One of the main effects of this transformation is the growing relevance of cross-border (actual and potential) disputes and, therefore, the need for adequate means to address and resolve them. Geographically bounded forms of dispute resolution based on national justice systems, courts, and independent judges have shown their limits to face the new challenge. Building on Canguilhem’s work on the norm, normal and pathological concepts, the paper explores the European Union’s attempt to provide adequate cross-border dispute resolution mechanisms through traditional justice means, showing achieved results and limits. The paper then explores the increasing role of dispute resolution mechanisms integrated into platforms, such as Amazon, eBay and Booking, that bring togeth...
Laws
An effective legal framework for judicial cooperation in the field of the service of documents is... more An effective legal framework for judicial cooperation in the field of the service of documents is a keystone for the effective functioning of the area of freedom, security and justice, as referred to in the Treaty on the EU. In particular, the proper service of a claim to the addressee is a necessary step for starting a proceeding and, simultaneously, an essential requirement for exercising the right of defence. The EU has adopted specific provisions to remodel the traditional channel of documents’ transmission with smoother solutions that assist cross-border judicial proceedings. Despite this, the European service procedure is not that straightforward and can still be very complex for most users, causing additional costs and legal uncertainty. Against this background, this article explores how the cross-border service of documents works in practice. It presents the findings resulting from empirical exploratory research carried out in Italy to assess the concrete use and usability o...
Laws, 2022
An effective legal framework for judicial cooperation in the field of the service of documents is... more An effective legal framework for judicial cooperation in the field of the service of documents is a keystone for the effective functioning of the area of freedom, security and justice, as referred to in the Treaty on the EU. In particular, the proper service of a claim to the addressee is a necessary step for starting a proceeding and, simultaneously, an essential requirement for exercising the right of defence. The EU has adopted specific provisions to remodel the traditional channel of documents’ transmission with smoother solutions that assist cross-border judicial proceedings. Despite this, the European service procedure is not that straightforward and can still be very complex for most users, causing additional costs and legal uncertainty. Against this background, this article explores how the cross-border service of documents works in practice. It presents the findings resulting from empirical exploratory research carried out in Italy to assess the concrete use and usability of the European rules adopted to simplify, speed up and reduce the costs of cross-border service of judicial and extrajudicial documents in civil and commercial matters, also in the view to support a possible digitalisation of the procedure. Building on empirical data, the paper brings to light the existing hiatus between the service procedure ‘on the books’ and the reality of how the relevant provisions are applied daily, so as to provide solid ground for reflecting on the current situation and on the impact that the recast Regulation 2020/1784/EU, which took effect in July 2022, will have to the supranational system of cross-border service of documents, in particular concerning the potential of the use of ICT to support it
From common rules to best practices in European Civil Procedure, 2017
This paper is the result of a long chain of working activities and cooperation which arose out of... more This paper is the result of a long chain of working activities and cooperation which arose out of a problem: Cross-border legal procedures in civil matters are not producing the expected results regardless of all ejustice investments done so far. The aim of this present work is to explore how existing technical and legal components and those under development could be used or reinvented to better address the problem. The question of how cross-border e-justice service provision should proceed will also be addressed. This paper has been produced with the financial support of the Justice Programme of the European Union (API for Justice project JUST/2014/JACC/AG/E-JU/6965). The contents of this paper are the sole responsibility of Ernst Steigenga and Marco Velicogna, and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Commission.
Keynote address @ ‘The role of courts and access to justice in the digital era’ Conference, Radbo... more Keynote address @ ‘The role of courts and access to justice in the digital era’
Conference, Radboud University, 9-10 June 2022
From common rules to best practices in European Civil Procedure, 2017
International E-Government Development, 2017
The aim of this chapter is to shed some light on the Information and Communication Technologies (... more The aim of this chapter is to shed some light on the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) development and implementation in the justice domain (the so-called e-Justice), and to glance at the key elements of this emerging phenomenon, building on the European Union experience at national and Community level. Although ICTs are increasingly at the core of the functioning of the justice service provision in modern democracies, their implementation and deployment, and the complex intertwining between law, technology and organizations, which characterize e-Justice experiences, remains poorly understood. The analysis of concrete e-Justice cases allows clarification of some of the practical implications of different experiences, providing useful indications of the elements which have made feasible the development of effective e-Justice systems.
European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities, 2019
This Special Issue of the European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities (EQPAM) prese... more This Special Issue of the European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities (EQPAM) presents a collection of papers contributing to the understanding of the increasingly relevant topic of legal requirements analysis and engineering in complex sociotechnical contexts, with an eye to the complex intertwining between law and technological systems development and implementation for the public service provision.
Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 2021
The number of cases is measured through a broad range of quantitative variables used in various s... more The number of cases is measured through a broad range of quantitative variables used in various studies and policy papers as key indicators of the volume of activity of national courts. Additionally, these variables, together with other data (e.g. time needed to resolve a case, number of judges, etc.) are part of a broader discourse on the efficiency of justice systems. However, such discourse can be problematic when data is not actually comparable. To raise the attention on this very relevant but poorly explored topic, this paper analyses the comparability of the caseload data by focusing on apparently simple categories like civil and commercial litigious or non-litigious cases and administrative cases. The EU Justice Scoreboard and CEPEJ data and national case definitions in France, Italy, and Romania are used to assess the most relevant justice EU datasets. The findings point towards significant differences between analysed systems that suggest extreme caution should be exercised...
Public Administration and Information Technology, 2019
The case of the Digital Service Infrastructure, developed by the European Union and its Member St... more The case of the Digital Service Infrastructure, developed by the European Union and its Member States to enable the deployment of trans-European digital judicial services, provides the occasion to investigate from a theoretical and empirical perspective the complex features that pertain the creation of the infrastructures that enable the rise of smart cities. The case explores the heterogeneous nature and emergent, non-linear evolution of large-scale information infrastructures. It helps develop a better understanding of the infrastructural components and dynamics that allow to integrate fast evolving technology into everyday people living environment providing new and smart services and to foster public value creation in Smart Cities. Finally, it exposes the relevance of legal components, helping reflecting on their role in addition to that of the technological, human and governance ones already identified by the smart cities literature.
European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities, 2019
In the last 30 years, the use of ICT spread into the justice sector with the aim of improving per... more In the last 30 years, the use of ICT spread into the justice sector with the aim of improving performances and reducing costs. While the justice domain has many distinctive features that makes ICT development and deployment particularly complex compared to other domains, design techniques and methods that proved to be successful in the broader ICT world, have been more and more introduced and tested in this difficult environment. This paper focuses on Business and Process Modelling (BPM) methodology, as a way to navigate the legal, organizational and social complexity of developing e-Justice services. First born for the analysis and improvement of private business processes through the use of graphical representations, the methodology has been largely utilized also for software design in complex organizations. After introducing the main literature on the BPM, we present the case of e-CODEX EU co-funded project, which developed an e-delivery platform to allow secure cross border exchange of judicial documents. The analysis allows grasping some of the strengths and limits of this method, and to learn important lessons on the relationship between BPMs' use and the legal performativity of ejustice.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017
The paper discusses the consistency, reliability, and compatibility of the data set and the appro... more The paper discusses the consistency, reliability, and compatibility of the data set and the appropriateness of indicators used by the EU Justice Scoreboard to assess the efficiency of European justice systems. The EU Commission has introduced the Justice Scoreboard as a tool providing objective, reliable, and comparable data on the functioning of the justice systems of all Member States (EU Commission 2013, p.3). This instrument is formally directed toward strengthening the rule of law, the functioning of national justice systems, and upholding more effective justice. The tool identifies the comparison of the efficiency of Member States justice systems and of other variables as specific means to reach such objectives. This paper analyses conceptual flaws and data quality problems, which undermine the use of the tool. From a conceptual perspective, the study makes clear that caseload data are used to measure workload. Furthermore, the Scoreboard uses the numbers of cases (incoming, pending and resolved) and indicators of effectiveness like clearance rate and length of proceedings to measure the efficiency of justice systems. The assessment of how Member States count apparently simple categories of cases as administrative and litigious or non-litigious civil and commercial cases shows crosscountry inconsistencies that make a crosscountry comparison at least problematic. While suggesting some clear actions to improve the flaws, the paper advice to take an extremely cautious approach in using such indicators for comparative purposes in the academic debate and policy-making. SUMMARY: I. Introduction-II. Methodology-2.1. The Scoreboard's data eco system-2.2 The subset of Scoreboard's data analysed in the research-2.3. Data consistency check: countries selection-2.4. Data consistency check: selecting variables-III. Evolution of the Scoreboard and CEPEJ data-3.1. Evolution of the CEPEJ data-3.2. Evolution of the Scoreboard-IV. Conceptual matters-significance of terminology and definitions-4.1. Assessment of conceptual consistency: the question of efficiency-4.2. Assessment of Caseload or Workload?-4.3 Counting the cases: assessing the case flow-V. Number of cases: a journey in search of consistency and comparabilità-5.1 Case definition and case typology-5.2 Data inconsistency: identifying the causes in the CEPEJ Report-5.3 * This paper has been selected to be presented at the XXIV Biennial Colloquium of the Italian Association of Comparative Law held at the Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa-Napoli, June 15-17 2017. The Editorial Board of the Comparative Law Review decided to publish it relying on the double-blind Peer Review made by the Scientific Commitee of the conference.
In the last 25 years, the introduction of ICT has been one of the main innovation drives and one ... more In the last 25 years, the introduction of ICT has been one of the main innovation drives and one of the main challenges of Justice systems all around the world. The idea is that, when properly linked to the automation and redesign of court procedures and practices, and when properly used to support the communication between courts and parties, ICT can be used to enhance efficiency, access, timeliness, transparency and accountability, thus helping the judiciaries to provide adequate services. In many countries, statutory reforms have been introduced to allow the use and the exchange of electronic data and documents within national judicial systems and ICT infrastructures, applications and services have been introduced. The e-CODEX project can be conceived as the next step, created to interconnect and make interoperable the e-justice systems developed so far within Europe and to allow the cross-border provision of e-Justice services. This paper provides a general overview of e-CODEX p...
The raise of computational power, the boost of electronic data storage capabilities, and the grow... more The raise of computational power, the boost of electronic data storage capabilities, and the growing ubiquitousness of the Internet facilitate the collection of legal information and increases its availability for stakeholders. In this context, EU institutions and key stakeholders are seeking to support initiatives that provide access to legislation and case law. This is considered paramount for economic activities, facilitating access to justice, and upholding the rule of law. This Chapter investigates existing electronic databases created to disseminate case law information on the application of EU judicial procedures and explores these databases ability to improve the application of European procedural instruments, forwarding their use and the creation of a common legal understanding. The analysis addresses also the possibilities opened by e-CODEX to integrated cross-national legal database supported by technology developments. The e-CODEX handled cross-border judicial procedures...
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020
Free movement of people, goods, services, and capital in Europe requires well-functioning cross-b... more Free movement of people, goods, services, and capital in Europe requires well-functioning cross-border dispute resolution mechanisms. Many initiatives have been taken over time by the EU institutions and Member States, both introducing legal instruments and developing information and e-justice technologies to support cross-border judicial litigation and cooperation. Unfortunately, the results so far achieved do not seem to be adequate to the needs of our increasingly interconnected society. Adding to this, the first wave of COVID-19 emergency measures brought court-based dispute resolution to a grinding halt. All around Europe, court buildings have been closed to the public, hearings suspended, and only emergency cases carried out. Some hope though seems to come from this bleak moment. The breakdown of existing practices, and the need to ensure the justice service provision required for our societies' functioning, resulted in many local and national initiatives to reconfigure the justice service. It provided the occasion to experiment with remote justice service provision and explore possibilities to reconfigure technologies and tools, which in many cases had been available for years, to permit remote working, hearings and legal communication. While most of the experiences have been carried out within the national boundaries, they provide the occasion for rethinking cross-border judicial procedures outside their traditional schemas. Building on this, taking stock of pre-COVID-19 EU cross border judicial services situation, this paper explores EU Member States e-justice emergency measures and attempts to stimulate the discussion on their potential for innovation in cross border judicial proceedings.
Ciências e Políticas Públicas / Public Sciences & Policies, 2019
The latest Multiannual European e-Justice Action Plan (2014-2018) embraced e-CODEX as the solutio... more The latest Multiannual European e-Justice Action Plan (2014-2018) embraced e-CODEX as the solution for achieving cross-border judicial cooperation by facilitating the digital exchange of case related data. Since the start of the project in December 2010, e-CODEX has transformed from a ambitious project to an operational Digital Service Infrastructure (DSI) in the judicial domain. Currently, the focus lies on the transition of the e-CODEX The work reported in this document has been part of the collaboration within the European Me-CODEX project, co-financed by the Justice Programme. While this work aims to provide input and support the ongoing discussions on e-CODEX sustainability and future governance, the opinions expressed here solely express the views of the authors.
Social Science Computer Review, 2018
This article explores the concept of open justice in the context of European Union (EU) cross-bor... more This article explores the concept of open justice in the context of European Union (EU) cross-border litigation and focusing on the e-justice dimension. It does it looking both at the open justice principle coming from the legal tradition and at the new ideas coming from the open government discourse. More in detail, the article investigates the attempt to create an open area of justice in Europe through the development and implementation of an European Justice Digital Service Infrastructure and the opening of such infrastructure to users and service providers. It is a development and implementation effort, which builds on the EU’s multilevel legal frameworks, which uses available technological innovations, which responds to the economic needs and challenges of an EU without internal borders, and which result should be capable of being embedded in the existing cultural communities. EU Member States (MSs) have developed such infrastructure and tested it successfully. Currently, EU in...
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015
is a researcher at the Research Institute on Judicial Systems of the National Research Council of... more is a researcher at the Research Institute on Judicial Systems of the National Research Council of Italy. His main research interests are judicial administration, comparative judicial systems, court technology, information infrastructures, evaluation, organizational change and the management of innovation. He participated in a number of national and international research projects, and played a key role in the e-CODEX EU Large Scale Pilot project. He is currently the principal investigator of the Pro-CODEX project. He served as a consultant and collaborated with the Italian Ministry of Justice and several international institutions (including the CoE, OSCE, UN and Worldbank) and worked as an advisor in judicial reform initiatives in several countries.
Informatics, 2017
At the EU level, an increasing number of resources are being invested in an attempt to provide be... more At the EU level, an increasing number of resources are being invested in an attempt to provide better public services through the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). While new tools are being designed and implemented, a shift from 'traditional' technologies that must be used to provide services to more interactive 'smart' technologies is beginning to take place. At the same time, an adequate understanding of the implications of this shift is still missing. This paper focuses on the EU e-Justice experience with the 'API-for-Justice' project, which investigates the challenges of opening up the European e-Justice Digital Service Infrastructure to external service providers by means of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). In particular, the exploration of potential services that can be provided by third parties through APIs for Justice shows the potential for a radical redesign of the justice service provision, where, for example, justice services are not requested by the party but are proposed or initiated by smart components of the infrastructure on the basis of inputs from the environment. In this perspective, smart technology research and, in particular, Brenner (2007)'s discussion on law and smart technology help to uncover the still unclear dynamics of change that characterize one of the key pillars of modern society: justice.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016
This paper investigates the e-Justice design and implementation experience taking place at EU lev... more This paper investigates the e-Justice design and implementation experience taking place at EU level for the provision of e-Justice cross border judicial services through the complex theory lenses.
Utrecht Law Review, Jan 31, 2013
The growing number of studies on ICT innovation experiences in the justice sector report a few ea... more The growing number of studies on ICT innovation experiences in the justice sector report a few easy successes and, far more frequently, difficult (and long) struggles to overcome multiple and often unexpected problems. Empirical analysis shows that these problems are the result of the complex interplay between technological, institutional, organizational and normative components of e-justice. What has been discovered is that the techno-institutional systems that are developed in the making of e-justice need not to be just technically functional, but also institutionally, organizationally and normatively compatible with the justice system. As the implementation of such systems breaks established practices and shared visions of what should be done, how and by whom, innovation requires the re-establishment of such agreements in the new situation. Cognitive, social and institutional features of the domain in which the innovation takes place thus play a paramount role in the innovation effort. This paper shows the interesting case of the development of an e-filing system, TéléRecours, in the French administrative justice sector. The system has been developed following a functional simplification strategy to cope with the technological, organizational and normative complexity of the endeavour. Such a strategy had been successfully adopted by several Northern European countries, but generally it had not been followed in Continental Europe, where much less successful attempts to create functional equivalents of paper-based procedures had been made. As the paper will attempt to explain, the functional simplification approach allowed the French justice administration to develop a functioning technology which is appreciated by the limited number of those who use it but that, due to its incapability of attaining institutional compatibility, is failing to exit the experimental phase.
Utrecht Law Review, 2013
The growing number of studies on ICT innovation experiences in the justice sector report a few ea... more The growing number of studies on ICT innovation experiences in the justice sector report a few easy successes and, far more frequently, difficult (and long) struggles to overcome multiple and often unexpected problems. Empirical analysis shows that these problems are the result of the complex interplay between technological, institutional, organizational and normative components of e-justice. What has been discovered is that the techno-institutional systems that are developed in the making of e-justice need not to be just technically functional, but also institutionally, organizationally and normatively compatible with the justice system. As the implementation of such systems breaks established practices and shared visions of what should be done, how and by whom, innovation requires the re-establishment of such agreements in the new situation. Cognitive, social and institutional features of the domain in which the innovation takes place thus play a paramount role in the innovation effort. This paper shows the interesting case of the development of an e-filing system, TéléRecours, in the French administrative justice sector. The system has been developed following a functional simplification strategy to cope with the technological, organizational and normative complexity of the endeavour. Such a strategy had been successfully adopted by several Northern European countries, but generally it had not been followed in Continental Europe, where much less successful attempts to create functional equivalents of paper-based procedures had been made. As the paper will attempt to explain, the functional simplification approach allowed the French justice administration to develop a functioning technology which is appreciated by the limited number of those who use it but that, due to its incapability of attaining institutional compatibility, is failing to exit the experimental phase.
Sistemas Judiciales Nº16 El rol de las nuevas tecnologías en los sistemas de justicia. , 2012
Ponencia presentada en la “International Seminar on e-Justice,” el 29-30 de septiembre, 2011, en ... more Ponencia presentada en la “International Seminar on e-Justice,” el 29-30 de septiembre, 2011, en Santiago, Chile (original en Inglés)
Keynote speech at the LEILA (towards a muLtilingual European platform for judIciaL Auctions) Fina... more Keynote speech at the LEILA (towards a muLtilingual European platform for judIciaL Auctions) Final Conference organized by the Italian Ministry of Justice
20-21 November 2023
presentation at the seminar ‘Nuove frontiere nella circolazione delle prove informatiche in Unio... more presentation at the seminar ‘Nuove frontiere nella circolazione delle prove informatiche in Unione Europea ’, Organized by the Faculty of Law of the University of Udine
Presentation at the Webinar on ‘Good Practices of Access to Justice in Europe’ organised by ELSA ... more Presentation at the Webinar on ‘Good Practices of Access to Justice in Europe’ organised by ELSA Portugal and PRO BONO Portugal, 16 June 2022
Pro-CODEX project presentation for the CCBE Law and IT Committee meeting, Vienna 27/02/2019
Lessons from API for Justice and Pro-CODEX Presentation at the Me-‐CODEX Governance Workshop, Vi... more Lessons from API for Justice and Pro-CODEX
Presentation at the Me-‐CODEX Governance Workshop, Vienna, 30.11.2017
Presentazione fatta al Focus Nazionale AIGA (Associazione Italiana Giovani Avvocati) 2015 sull'Or... more Presentazione fatta al Focus Nazionale AIGA (Associazione Italiana Giovani Avvocati) 2015 sull'Ordinamento Giudiziario che riflette su:
- Crescita di dati disponibili sul funzionamento dei sistemi giudiziari.
- Crescita dell’utilizzo di questi dati da parte dei vari attori coinvolti nel funzionamento dei sistemi giudiziari o ad esso interessati.
- Crescita delle perplessità sulla confrontabilità ed opportunità di utilizzare tali dati in contesti e per finalità diverse da quelli per I quali sono stati raccolti.
Presentation on European order for payment procedure, European Small Claims procedure, e-Justice ... more Presentation on European order for payment procedure, European Small Claims procedure, e-Justice Portal and e-CODEX
Presentation at the Panel discussion on facilitating experiences and practices towards the introd... more Presentation at the Panel discussion on facilitating experiences and practices towards the introduction of ICT and electronic evidence in courts of the European Informatics Data Exchange Framework for Courts and Evidence - Market Size Workshop: Obstacles and Facilitating Factors towards the Digitalisation of Justice: the Specific Issue of Electronic Evidence in Criminal Trials; Rome 11 December 2015.
Seminario su e-CODEX al corso di Teoria dell'Organizzazione presso il Dipartimento di Scienze Pol... more Seminario su e-CODEX al corso di Teoria dell'Organizzazione presso il Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali dell'Università di Bologna
Presentation at CEPEJ-GT-EVAL 26th meeting, Strasbourg, 20 – 21 November 2014, looking at past a... more Presentation at CEPEJ-GT-EVAL 26th meeting, Strasbourg, 20 – 21 November 2014, looking at past and present measurements and trends of ICT to reflect on how the CEPEJ questionnaire section of ICT could evolve.
Call for papers: Special Issue of the European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities (... more Call for papers: Special Issue of the European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities (EQPAM) welcomes submissions on the topic of legal requirements analysis and engineering for complex sociotechnical systems.
April 08, 2019 — deadline for submitting contributions
Word document to be e-mailed to:
Marco Velicogna — marco.velicogna@irsig.cnr.it
Aernout Schmidt — a.h.j.schmidt@law.leidenuniv.nl
On the basis of the previous discussion at the regional conferences and the study visit to the No... more On the basis of the previous discussion at the regional conferences and the study visit to the Norwegian judiciary in 2016, this study enabled the Western Balkan judiciaries to explore even further the judicial evaluation objectives, methods and challenges and to put them in a broader perspective of justice goals and objectives. The Research Institute on Judicial Systems of the National Research Council of Italy shared with the regional judiciaries its expertise and a body of knowledge the Institute has developed in these areas. The seminars included interactive presentations based on the comparative approach and case studies from the Western Balkans and beyond. All seminar sessions were designed to include participant's input on the discussed topics. In that regard, the participants shared their practices, provided examples of their (innovative) approaches and discussed with IRSIG experts some of the dilemmas they face in their judicial settings.
This paper undertakes an in-depth analysis of the key quantitative variables that are presented a... more This paper undertakes an in-depth analysis of the key quantitative variables that are presented and considered by the Commission to be indicators for what should be an efficient justice system in the European Justice Scoreboard discourse: the numbers of cases.