Submitted Abstract
Globalization profoundly transforms procedural law and procedural science: In the world of today, there is an open competition between different forms of dispute resolution (litigation, arbitration and ADR) and lawmakers strive to improve their court systems in order to attract high-value litigation. Accordingly, national and supranational stakeholders are regarding more often foreign and comparative procedural law. In the legal studies, these changes have not remained unnoticed, although procedural science has hardly ever tried to investigate and to understand these developments from a global perspective. In order to overcome the old paradigm of dispute resolution being only conducted within the national procedural traditions, a global perspective on procedural law is needed today: on the actual trends, on the transformations of dispute resolution and – essentially – on the methods of how to compare and to assess procedural efficiency.The comparative procedural law project of the Max Planck Institute (MPI) Luxembourg shall close this gap. It shall evaluate the transformations regarding the different forms of dispute resolution, the different actors and the impact of information technology on the field. By focussing on actual methodology of comparative procedural law that is changing due to the availability of big data and of empirical research the project aims at setting the epistemic level field in this research area for the years to come. The project shall establish a Manual on Comparative Procedural Law which shall be accessible online and in a printed version. Prof. Burkhard Hess (MPI Lux.) together with Prof. Margaret Woo (NorthEU Boston) and Prof. Loic Cadiet (Sorbonne Law School) shall lead the research. 40 professors of procedural law from all parts of the world will form a Consortium which shall elaborate the project. Multinational teams will write the different chapters. A Team of 15 Researchers of the Department of European and Comparative Procedural Law at the MPI Luxembourg will support the teams via a platform where the manuscripts are exchanged and information is shared. The progress of the project will be discussed in three conferences and workshops. Finally, the Manual on Comparative Procedural Law shall become a main source of reference for future research.