E-Justice: A Review and Agenda for Future Research

Abstract

As governments are increasingly adopting digitalization reforms to improve public services, the justice domain is no exception. Although not as rapidly grown as the other e-government initiatives, electronic justice or e-justice practices are developed and implemented to make justice services and their administration more open, accessible, effective, efficient, and less expensive for all actors. On the other hand, there are also specific challenges or risks involved in the digitalization of this area, such as the delicacy of the processes, legal restrictions, ensuring the independence of the judiciary, system design, and good user experience, and high interoperability. As a result of the relatively immature nature and the diversity of e-justice systems being used around the world, an integrated research framework outlining the specific areas and topics of research for e-justice and identifying future research directions is still lacking. In light of this gap, this chapter systematically reviews scholarly research on e-justice to present an integrated research framework. We identify 36 key research publications related to e-justice employing Web of Science and Google Scholar and review them to highlight what we know and do not know about e-justice. The study reveals four broad areas of foci about e-justice research in general: Identification of success and risk factors, assessment of the impact of e-justice implementation, examination of e-justice user satisfaction and experiences, and evaluation of judicial websites. For each of the research areas outlined, theoretical foundations, specific research aims, and main findings, and suggested directions for future research are summarized. A future research agenda informed by the results of the review is proposed.