Abstract
Recently, there is a growing attention on the topic of “smart technologies”. Many scholars and specialized journals pay attention to the development of smart tools and to their characteristics of “smartness”. Despite scholars talk of smart technology in many fields from e-government to health-care, there is a very scarce focus on technologies developed in order to digitalize justice procedures (e-justice). This chapter focuses on the topic of e-justice through the lenses of the smart technology literature in order to understand which are the main elements of smartness in the e-justice context and how a service can support them. In order to pursue this objective, the study first analysed the smart technology literature in order to acknowledge which are the main features of a smart technology. This allowed to design a “smart technology framework” that has been applied to the analysis of two e-justice services developed in Europe, the European e-Justice Portal and e-CODEX. By checking which features of smartness the two services are endowed with, we shed light on the peculiarities of e-justice and on which are the main issues that may impede these systems from being smart. In particular, the study acknowledges that when digitalizing justice procedures often the technology reproduces the same issues affecting the legal procedure itself. Even if both cases analyzed demonstrate to be “smart” in terms of multidimensionality, interoperability, adaptability and effectiveness, they are affected by issues related to diffusion and equal accessibility mainly due to the legal procedure that the two services digitalize.
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Notes
- 1.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
- 2.
2002/584/JHA: Council Framework Decision of 13 June 2002 on the European arrest warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States - Statements made by certain Member States on the adoption of the Framework Decision.
- 3.
2008/909/JHA: Council Framework Decision of 27 November 2008 on the application of the principle of mutual recognition to judgments in criminal matters imposing custodial sentences or measures involving deprivation of liberty for the purpose of their enforcement in the European Union.
- 4.
Regulation (EC) No 1896/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 creating a European order for payment procedure, in OJ L 399, 30.12.2006, p. 1–32.
- 5.
Regulation (EC) No 861/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 July 2007 establishing a European Small Claims Procedure, in OJ L 199, 31.7.2007, pp. 1–22.
- 6.
Regulation (EU) No 655/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 May 2014 establishing a European Account Preservation Order procedure to facilitate cross-border debt recovery in civil and commercial matters, in OJ L 189, 27.6.2014, pp. 59–92.
- 7.
E-Codex—e-Justice Communication via Online Data Exchange, http://www.e-codex.eu/home.html.
- 8.
European Order for Payment procedure.
- 9.
Research Institute on Justice Systems of the Italian National Research Council.
- 10.
Central Department for Enforcement on the basis of Authentic Documents at the Local Court of Ljubljana.
- 11.
Draft Strategy on European e-Justice 2014–2018 (2013/C 376/06).
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
Draft Strategy on EU e-Justice 2014–2018 (2013/C 376/06).
- 15.
COM(2008) 329 final. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2008:0329:FIN:EN:PDF.
- 16.
See note 10.
- 17.
- 18.
(2013/2852 (RSP)).
- 19.
See note 10.
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
Consistent navigation menu is a criteria part of the WUHCAG checklist. The checklist is composed by a set of criteria supporting the accessibility of websites. For more information see https://www.wuhcag.com/wcag-checklist/ (accessed the 05/09/2016).
- 23.
Find a Lawyer. See above in the same section.
- 24.
E−Codex—e−Justice Communication via Online Data Exchange, http://www.e-codex.eu/home.html.
- 25.
PEPPOL: e-procurement, epSOS: e-health, STORK: e-identity and SPOCS: e-business services. More information can be found here: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/document.cfm?action=display&doc_id=1250
- 26.
Large Scale Pilot.
- 27.
CEF project funded by the European Commission is devoted to stimulate and support projects of common interest for the deployment and operation of digital service infrastructures. For more information please see http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/connecting-europe-facility.
- 28.
For more information please see https://e-justice.europa.eu/home.do?action=home.
- 29.
Regulation (EC) No 1896/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 creating a European order for payment procedure, in OJ L 399, 30.12.2006, p. 1–32.
Regulation (EC) No 861/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 July 2007 establishing a European Small Claims Procedure, in OJ L 199, 31.7.2007, pp. 1–22.
- 30.
The Regulation (EU) No. 910/2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market (eIDAS Regulation) provides a predictable regulatory environment to enable secure and seamless electronic interactions between businesses, citizens and public authorities. The regulation ensures that people and businesses can use their own national electronic identification schemes (eIDs) to access public services in other EU countries where eIDs are available and creates an European internal market for eTS—namely electronic signatures, electronic seals, time stamp, electronic delivery service and website authentication, thus ensuring that they will work across borders and have the same legal status as traditional paper based processes.
- 31.
The system can also be named “advanced signature system”. Neither of the terms/phrases are defined legally. The exact definition of which kind of signature is needed can be found in the specific regulations for the different uses cases. Further legal requirements are described in Hvillum et al. (2014).
- 32.
Elektronischer Rechtsverkehr.
- 33.
- 34.
In Italy, the jurisdiction for EOP cases is fragmented over the Italian courts. The incoming EOPs from European citizens outside of Italy must be processed by the Italian courts with jurisdiction over the particular case (typically jurisdiction is based on where the defendant resides, with some exceptions).
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Lupo, G., Velicogna, M. (2018). Making EU Justice Smart? Looking into the Implementation of New Technologies to Improve the Efficiency of Cross Border Justice Services Delivery. In: Rodríguez Bolívar, M. (eds) Smart Technologies for Smart Governments. Public Administration and Information Technology, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58577-2_6
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