Creating excellent courts

Justice systems can play a role in improving the wellbeing of individuals and the communities they serve.

In a recently published article The International Framework for Court Excellence and Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Creating Excellent Courts and Enhancing Wellbeing authors Elizabeth Richardson, Pauline Spencer and David Wexler discuss two tools that can be used to improve court performance and enhance wellbeing:

• the International Framework for Court Excellence — a quality management system for courts and tribunals; and
• Therapeutic Jurisprudence — an interdisciplinary discourse with the goal of improving the wellbeing of people involved with the law and legal processes.

Both the Framework and Therapeutic Jurisprudence are aimed at improving the quality of justice.

The Framework provides a process for continually improving the performance of courts and tribunals.

By incorporating TJ thinking into the Framework, courts and tribunals can continually identify new ways to enhance wellbeing and then plan, implement, measure and evaluate these innovations.

TJ approaches can then become an integrated and sustainable part of court and tribunal administration rather than just an “add on”.

This article provides:

• an outline of the Framework and TJ
• the principles and the methodologies that each entails; and
• the various types of innovation and reform that have arisen through their application.

Access the full article here