Australia is presently seeking to streamline its civil justice system. A popular myth is that the Australian civil justice system is inaccessible to "ordinary people" due to its high cost, slow speed, and complexity. These alleged failings are attributed to various causes, such as arcane and inefficient judicial practices, money-hungry lawyers, and--the very foundation of civil litigation--adversarialism. This volume confronts this folklore.

This book investigates civil justice from the perspective of its major user and funding source, the government, and the group of Australians who use it the least and feel the most alienated from the system: indigenous Australians. It offers the insights of those who work with adversarialism day in and day out—judges and lawyers—and reveals both defenders and strident advocates for change. Finally, it steps back to provide an outsider's view of Australian adversarialism from those well acquainted with a sister system in the United States.

Table of Contents

Introduction - Helen Stacy and Michael Lavarch

PART ONE: THE DIMENSIONS OF CHANGE
CHAPTER 1: Changing Roles and Skills for Courts, Tribunals and Practitioners - Daryl Williams
CHAPTER 2: Fighting the Fiends From Finance - Michael Lavarch
CHAPTER 3: Civil Litigation: An Indigenous Perspective - Colleen Starkis

PART TWO: WHAT CHANGES ARE POSSIBLE?
CHAPTER 4: Reforming the Civil Justice System: The Case for a Considered Approach - Justice Ronald Sackville
CHAPTER 5: Opportunities and Limitations for Change in the Australian Adversary System - Justice David Ipp
CHAPTER 6: Judicial Time Limits and the Adversarial System - Bret Walker

PART THREE: ISSUES OF JUSTICE AND ETHICS
CHAPTER 7: Fairness in a Predominantly Adversarial System - Justice Geoffrey Davies
CHAPTER 8: Dining at the Ritz: Visions of Justice for the Individual In the Changing Adversarial System - Marc Galanter
CHAPTER 9: Twenty Theses on Adversarial Ethics - David Luban

References
Index