More Access to Less Justice: Efficiency, Proportionality and Costs in Canadian Civil Justice Reform
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper critically examines the intersections between access to justice and efficiency reforms in civil justice policy. To achieve just ends, legal processes must strike an appropriate balance between efficiency of inputs and accuracy of outputs. Recent history in Canada, England and elsewhere reveals civil justice reform agendas dominated by streamlined procedures intended to deliver speedier and less costly dispute resolution. Responding to rapidly rising legal costs and delays, policymakers have come to equate less process with greater access. While empirical studies confirm that these reforms have created more efficient disputing frameworks and happier disputants, there has been scant data gathered to measure the other impacts of such reforms. In particular, how have these tapered procedures impacted on the ability of our adversarial model to deliver accurate, legally correct outcomes? By examining one such efficiency reform in Canada - that of interim/advance costs awards - we can see the potential danger resulting from reducing procedural safeguards without considering substantive impacts. It seems clear that efficiency reforms are bringing greater access, but what of greater justice?
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.036 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.024 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".