Two For One : How Leveraging Small Claims Procedures Can Improve Judicial Efficiency and Access to Justice
People often argue about little things in both their personal and their business relationships. From a legal perspective, low-value monetary disputes are known as small claims. The monetary threshold for a claim to be qualified as “small” is genera...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/487041607706210590/Two-For-One-How-Leveraging-Small-Claims-Procedures-Can-Improve-Judicial-Efficiency-and-Access-to-Justice http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34927 |
| Summary: | People often argue about little things
in both their personal and their business relationships.
From a legal perspective, low-value monetary disputes are
known as small claims. The monetary threshold for a claim to
be qualified as “small” is generally determined by the
economic conditions of a country, but it can also reflect a
policy choice to subject a subset of the overall demand for
court services to specific procedural rules. Given the
frequency of small claims if they are not resolved quickly
and efficiently, they can inundate the justice system, drain
limited judicial resources, and generate case backlogs,
while ruining personal relationships and frustrating
business operations. Conversely, some small claims cases do
not even get to have their day in court because litigation
is too costly for many ordinary citizens. This means that
access to justice is hindered. Therefore, unresolved small
claims can exacerbate inefficiency in court processes and
contribute to a lack of access to justice. Societies cannot
afford to let a growing body of minor disputes clog justice
systems, stall economic activity, and fuel social tensions.
Thus, an increasing number of countries are designing
special rules for such disputes; these are often known as
small claims, simplified, or fast-track procedures.
Currently, as many as 132 economies have either a
stand-alone small claims court or a simplified procedure for
small claims. |
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