Looking to courts of law for disaster justice

Abstract

This chapter considers the implications of a desire to look to the courts of law to deliver a form of disaster justice by distributing those losses across the decision makers that contribute to vulnerability. It is argued that the state should consider alternatives to adversarial legal process in order to deliver disaster justice. A better approach would be to adopt ‘restorative practice’ inquiries-that is, inquiries that focus on the consequences of an event and which seek to understand why an event was important for those involved and how those involved can make sense, learn from and take responsibility for identifying and implementing learning from the event. Essential to the restorative process is consideration of making good financial losses without the need to blame.