Goals of Civil Justice in Norway: Readiness for a Pragmatic Reform

Abstract

Norwegian civil justice has undergone thorough reforms in recent years. The adoption in 2005 of a new act on civil procedure – the Dispute Act – allowed for a consideration of the goals of civil justice. The wide competence of the ordinary courts of law to deal with cases of civil and administrative law as well as criminal cases is retained but the present trend is to confine the role of the courts to adjudication and to transfer non-judicial tasks to other bodies. In civil justice several goals are taken into account, in particular dispute resolution, implementation and enforcement of substantive law, clarification and development of the law, and also control of the Executive and the Legislature by way of deciding cases brought before the courts by the parties. None of these goals are given absolute priority and their relative importance may differ between the various court tiers. While offering new remedies to speed up proceedings and also to protect the public interest the rules of the Dispute Act may often be regarded as a pragmatic compromise between various goals and considerations. The Act seeks to promote swift, efficient and fair handling of cases and combines a quest for material truth and correct decisions with a right of the parties to dispose of the case.