ABSTRACT
The CPR describes itself as a ‘new procedural code with the overriding objective of dealing with cases justly’.3 It then goes on to define ‘justly’. Justice includes: ‘ensuring
that the parties are on an equal footing’; ‘saving expense’; dealing with cases which are proportionate to what is at stake in the litigation; making sure that cases are dealt with ‘expeditiously and fairly’; and taking into account the general allocation of resources in the civil justice system. When we turn to an analysis of the leading authorities on procedural law, we will see that, even though some of them predate the CPR, they share this overarching concern with the fairness of proceedings.4 However, before we develop this argument, it is worth bearing in mind that this interplay is not without its tensions, and requires choices to be made between conflicting principles. Thus, an important aspect of the quest for the principles of civil justice is an understanding that judges are required to act creatively in the development of procedural law. Indeed, the values that underlie these principles are not inert, but take the shape that they do through a process of judicial articulation, which is also necessarily a balancing and shaping of the competing priorities of procedural law. This, in turn, raises issues about the CPR and human rights. Work remains to be done on the human rights context in which the CPR was drafted. Such issues are best debated in detail, and this chapter does not intend to discuss in any coherent way the human rights elements of the Woolf reforms. Our focus remains on the inherent conflicts between competing principles that articulate different aspects of the concept.
