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litigation track leading to trial and into measures designed to promote
settlement should be guided by an understanding of the varying roles of
the court.
3. Quality of justice
[61]
ADR as supplementary to civil litigation and adjudication raises the spectre of
two-tiered justice one justice for those who can afford to go to trial and another
justice for those who cannot. Fiss sees a risk that the i ndividualization,
informalization, and privatization of justice under ADR may further disadvantage the
least powerful groups or individuals in society.82 ADR leaves open the potential to
satisfy individual demands i n order to forestall their aggregation83 and to pay more
attention to interests than rights.84 To Sabatino, ADR mechanisms often resemble, at
least in certain respects, litigation lite where disputants go to avoid the high costs, in
terms of time, money, and stress, of the orthodox model of litigation.85
[62]
Talk of the possibility of a lower tier of justice for those using ADR raises
questions about the quality of justice obtained. Do legally-based results provide a
better quality of justice than interest-based results in individual cases? What role, if
any, should the public interest in the communication and reinforcement of values play
in decisions about how a dispute should be resolved? Is justice less well served when
time-honoured procedural and evidentiary rules are compromised when the
information upon which decisions are based is unsworn, unrecorded and unchecked by
rules of evidence or public scrutiny? What is the impact of lack of procedural clarity
on the quality of justice? What is the potential for abuse of process where one party
has no desire to resolve the dispute by agreement? If the public interest is a factor in
determining what process to use, who should decide whether resolution by
adjudication or by the parties is most appropriate? What should happen when parties
whose case raises issues of public interest cannot afford adjudication?
4. Functions performed by judges
[63]
In the co-mingled conception of ADR and the courts, the distinctions that might
otherwise exist are blurred. In the complementary conception, [b]e ing clear about the
differences in function [would] assist preparation by counsel and the parties who need
predictability about why they are going to meet with a judge.86