ABSTRACT
A good measure of the vitality of a new justice idea is the ratio between the claims made by advocates and the evidence to support those claims. The less evidence exists, the greater the excitement and debate about the new idea. When evidence arrives, we may begin to lose interest. The results may be equivocal, or worse, we may despair that the new idea does not ‘measure up’ in the expected ways. Matthews (1988: 1–2) captured this problem well in 1988, when he reflected on what happened in Britain and the United States in the 1970s and 80s with the introduction of the new idea of informal justice.
In the beginning there was optimism. The introduction of more informal forms of dispute processing would, it was claimed, provide a greater level of participation and access to justice … After a period of experimentation, … the initial enthusiasm subsided and many observers became sceptical about the possibility of informal justice realising its promises. Less than a decade after the emergence of the first wave of optimism, [there was] an equally forceful wave of pessimism … The verdict was that informalism was a distraction, an error, an experiment which had failed. Despite these critiques, support for informal justice continued, and we are now entering a new phase, which involves moving beyond the poles of optimism and pessimism, and evaluat[ing] the movement towards informal justice in different theoretical and practical terms. [In doing so] … We are push[ed] in two … directions. On one hand, we [must] examine the specific details of informal dispute processing; and on the other hand, we [must consider] the wider political and social frameworks within which they operate. In this way, we might avoid the twin pitfalls of idealism and impossibilism which [have] informed much of the debate so far.
