Alternative Dispute Resolution Processes within the Framework of the World‐Wide Access‐to‐Justice Movement

I shall start with a few words about the topic of this workshop. Its official title is 'Dispute Resolution: Civil Justice and its Alternatives'. Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is usually given a strictly technical meaning, which refers to those devices which are intended to solve disputes, mainly out of court, or by non-judicial devices. This, however, is not the only meaning the conveners of this conference had in mind. Quite properly, they made it clear that what they had in mind was to deal more generally with those deviceswhetherjudicial or notthat have emerged as alternatives to the ordinary or traditional types of procedures. Thus, class actions, for instance, would be part of the topic they envisaged dealing with, as well as access to justice generally, including access to information in the hands of potential litigants (thus, discovery devices as developed, in particular, in the USA). I will follow, in part at least, this broader approach, and will try to analyse the topic, within the framework of the world-wide access to justice movement, indeed, as an important feature of such a movement.