PhD research Tom Vennmanss: Access to justice in times of technological acceleration: The possible impact of digitalization on judicial debt collection procedures of one-shotters

Duration
2020 until 2025
Project member(s)
Project type
Research

Tom Vennmanns is working on a dissertation with the working title 'Access to justice in times of technological acceleration: The possible impact of digitalization on judicial debt collection procedures of one-shotters'.

Since the emergence of the access to justice movement in the 1970s, a particular concern has been to explore how legal systems can be made more accessible especially to ordinary people and, moreover, to disadvantaged groups of society. There are various indicators that also in Germany and the Netherlands there is no full access to justice for all those seeking justice. This is particularly true in civil proceedings and for those who only make occasional use of the legal system (so-called one-shotters). The number of civil proceedings has been decreasing in both countries for many years. This applies in particular to judicial debt collections. The high hurdles to enforce civil rights before state courts, such as costs, time and emotional stress, are mentioned as reasons for this development. 

First, the research of Tom addresses the access to justice reality of one-shotters in judicial debt collections before German and Dutch courts. Secondly, he explores whether the digitalization of civil courts and civil proceedings could be an antidote to possible access to justice problems. This objective relates to a relatively new branch of international access to justice research, which analyses the possible consequences of the phenomenon of the digitalization of our society on access to justice.