This chapter explores online dispute resolution (ODR) as a possible mechanism for redressing fundamental rights violations by the EU. ODR as a form of redress mechanism is one of the main solutions that the EU has repeatedly proposed for the private sector when there were signs of problems with access to justice and the violation of individuals’ rights. This has been the case in consumer law with the ODR Regulation. The chapter gives an overview of various existing ODR mechanisms that could provide ideas for an EU fundamental rights ODR platform. Examples range from pre-trial ODR for small claims to out-of-court dispute settlement bodies under the DSA and the Meta Oversight Board. Embedding a fundamental rights ODR mechanism in the EU system would face challenges both in terms of the legal basis and its actual implementation. The European Ombudsman or the Fundamental Rights Officers of the EU Asylum Agency and Frontex could be a possible institutional choice for administering such an ODR mechanism.

The application of AI in judicial decision-making has the potential for both courts and people seeking justice in consumer law contexts. This is especially true for AI assistant systems that help judges by pre-evaluating individual cases. Currently, the application of a human-out-of-the-loop robojudge is unrealistic in Europe as its use would not only be in conflict of fundamental rights enshrined in the ECHR

In this chapter, Antonio Segura Serrano examines the potential for new and emerging technologies to be used to help settle international disputes. This chapter considers how digital evidence can be gathered and evaluated by dispute settlement bodies. This chapter also analyses what role online dispute settlement bodies can play in the settlement of international disputes. In doing so, it assesses the practice of online dispute resolution systems already in place for online transactions among individuals (both private and public systems) in order to identify any features that can be transposed to inter-State dispute settlement. This chapter concludes by explaining that these systems, in particular their use of algorithms and artificial Intelligence, offer some important lessons for State-to-State dispute settlement.

Court-connected ODR has already shown itself capable of dramatically improving access to justice by eliminating barriers rooted in the fact that courts traditionally resolve disputes only during certain hours, in particular physical places, and only through face-to-face proceedings. Given the centrality of courthouses to our system of justice, too many Americans have discovered their rights are too difficult or costly to exercise. As court-connected ODR systems spread, offering more inclusive types of dispute resolution services, people will soon find themselves with the law and the courts at their fingertips. But robust access to justice requires more than just raw, low-cost opportunities to resolve disputes. Existing ODR platforms seek to replicate in-person procedures, simplifying and clarifying steps where possible, but litigants without representation still proceed without experience, expertise, guardrails, or the ability to gauge risk or likely outcomes. Injecting ODR with a dose of data science has the potential to address many of these shortfalls. Enhanced ODR is unlikely to render representation obsolete, but it can dramatically reduce the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots” and, on some dimensions—where machines can outperform humans—next generation platforms may be a significant improvement.

Although proponents of online dispute resolution systems proclaim that their innovations will expand access to justice for so-called “simple cases,” evidence of how the technology actually operates and who is benefitting from it demonstrates just the opposite. Resolution of some disputes may be more expeditious and user interface more intuitive. But in order to achieve this, parties generally do not receive meaningful information about their rights and defenses. The opacity of the technology (ODR code is not public and unlike court appearance its proceedings are private) means that due process defects and systemic biases are difficult to identify and address. Worse still, the “simple cases” argument for ODR assumes that the dollar value of a dispute is a reasonable proxy for its complexity and significance to the parties. This assumption is contradicted by well established research on procedural justice. Moreover, recent empirical studies show that low money value cases, which dominate state court dockets, are for the most part debt collection proceedings brought by well-represented private creditors or public creditors (including courts themselves, which increasingly depend on fines and fees for their operating budget). Defendants in these proceedings are overwhelmingly unrepresented individuals. What ODR offers in these settings is not access to justice for ordinary people, but rather a powerful accelerated collection and compliance technology for private creditors and the state. This chapter examines the design features of ODR and connects them to the ideology of tech evangelism that drives deregulation and market capture, the aspirations of the alternative dispute resolution movement, and hostility to the adversary system that has made strange bedfellows of traditional proponents of access to justice and tech profiteers. The chapter closes with an analysis of front-end standards for courts and bar regulators to consider to ensure that technology marketed in the name of access to justice actually serves the legal needs of ordinary people.

The fourth chapter provides the attributes that DLT has that can make it unique when solving climate issues. It considers the overlap between the traditional legal structures in a system and the modern crypto-legal proposals and provides solutions to the security issues arising under the EU ETS.

Lex Mercatoria, Latin for ‘merchant law,’ is a very old concept that predates the rise of nation-states. During the medieval period, a body of legal conventions evolved through custom and commercial practice and was enforced by private courts along the merchant trade routes.1 Modern nation-states came to replace this traditional method of resolving disputes with domestic courts. But the gradual increase in international commerce has encouraged nations to defer to international arbitration as a solution to complex cross-border business disputes, and various other alternatives to lawsuits brought in civil courts.

The field of dispute resolution has long been at the forefront of modernising legal education. Continuing this tradition, this chapter presents findings from an evaluation of an exercise introduced into the core law school curriculum at Monash University in Australia. In our compulsory litigation and dispute resolution units, we built an experiential exercise in which students resolved a dispute using both an online dispute resolution (ODR) platform and more traditional face-to-face mediation role-play. Students completed a short survey about their experience of the portal (n=64, response rate 30 per cent) and provided their reflective journals about the exercise for analysis (n=55). Drawing on the findings, we consider the benefits and limitations of this approach for facilitating students’ exposure to ODR. We explore themes including student understanding of ODR’s impacts on dispute processes and outcomes; appropriate conduct in dispute resolution settings; and the challenges of computer-mediated communication. We also identify means by which experiential activities can draw students’ attention to power disparities and access to justice challenges in ODR to develop their critical thinking about the rapid developments in this field.

China’s contract law is examined to determine if there are legal ambiguities with regard to formation, performance, and modification of smart contracts and the problems relating to the enforcement, remedies, and dispute resolution. It is important to Chinese law not to act prematurely to change existing legal frameworks in response to a still evolving technology (blockchain-based smart contracts). On the other hand, the regulatory framework for platform operators needs be adjusted carefully to incentivize them to diligently check and verify the information of vendors who conduct business on the platform.