Ombudsmen and ADR

Description

How do ordinary people experience and make sense of the informal justice system? Drawing on original data with British and German users of Ombudsmen— an important institution of informal justice, Naomi Creutzfeldt offers a nuanced comparative answer to this question. In so doing, she takes current debates on procedural justice and legal consciousness forward. This book explores consciousness around ‘alternatives’ to formal legality and asks how situated assumptions about law and fairness guide people's understandings of the informal justice system. Creutzfeldt shows that the everyday relationship that people have with the informal justice system is shaped by their experiences and expectations of the formal legal system and its agents. This book is an innovative theoretical and empirical statement about the future prospects for informal justice in Europe. Front Matter ....Pages i-xv Ombudsmen and Informal Justice (Naomi Creutzfeldt)....Pages 1-8 Front Matter ....Pages 9-9 Europe’s Justice Systems (Naomi Creutzfeldt)....Pages 11-27 Models of Ombudsmen (Naomi Creutzfeldt)....Pages 29-52 Procedural Justice and Legal Consciousness: Questions of Theory and Method (Naomi Creutzfeldt)....Pages 53-70 Front Matter ....Pages 71-71 Expectations and Perceptions of Ombudsmen in a Cross-National Comparison (Naomi Creutzfeldt)....Pages 73-93 Everyday Assumptions about Ombudsmen (Naomi Creutzfeldt)....Pages 95-115 Front Matter ....Pages 117-117 A European Informal Justice System? (Naomi Creutzfeldt)....Pages 119-138 Growing Informal Justice (from the Inside-Out) (Naomi Creutzfeldt)....Pages 139-154 Conclusion: Paths for Theory and Research (Naomi Creutzfeldt)....Pages 155-159 Back Matter ....Pages 161-192