This introductory chapter illustrates why evidence in the individual communications procedure of the United Nations human rights treaty bodies (UNTB) is an issue requiring reflection and clarification. The chapter firstly contextualises this central topic of this book by broadly introducing the UNTBs’ mandates, composition and ways of working, as well as some general features of their individual communications procedures. Indications are given of how this legal, institutional and procedural setting interacts with the handling of evidence by the UNTBs, as well as some of the key questions it raises. The chapter further outlines some of the particular research challenges encountered in tackling the questions at the heart of this book, and how they have been addressed. It then goes on to introduce the four-part structure of the book and its ten chapters, including the final chapter, containing recommendations. Finally, this introduction discusses cross-cutting themes which emerge from the contributions.

Before accessing the UN treaty bodies’ individual communications procedure, a complainant must have exhausted domestic remedies. This admissibility rule exists for good reasons, but it has limits. In particular, exemptions must be recognised in respect to domestic remedies which lack effectiveness, including accessibility. Regrettably, UNTBs are currently reverting to a formalistic and mechanical application of this admissibility rule. What justice requires, however, is the opposite: an expansive consideration of the plethora of barriers that prevent access to domestic justice, as well as a reflection about how each barrier can realistically be evidenced by a complainant. This can be achieved, this chapter argues, through an individual-centred, contextual approach, which achieves the aim of preventing the state from escaping international scrutiny, while highlighting the crucial role domestic justice should play in remedying human rights wrongs.

This chapter addresses evidence-related recommendations for the consideration of the UN treaty bodies. Written by three practitioners from the civil society sector, with direct experience of the individual communication procedure before the UNTBs, it also benefited from input from all the contributors to the volume, which it concludes. Part I offers normative reflections. It deals with legal questions, including: What should the applicable standard be when determining human rights claims? How should this standard vary according to the type of claim and the stage of the proceedings? In what circumstances and under which conditions should the burden of proof be shifted from the complainant to the respondent state? Part II deals with organisational, and thus more mundane issues, but it highlights how proper identification and communication of the applicable evidentiary concepts and norms are essential to a transparent, accessible and fair system, therefore necessitating proper resourcing.

Access to justice is a critical element of the rule of law, ensuring individuals can exercise their legal rights and resolve disputes through formal and alternative mechanisms. In the Netherlands, the judiciary plays a vital role in facilitating this access, but challenges remain, particularly for vulnerable groups. This paper introduces voorRecht-rechtspraak, an innovative online dispute resolution platform designed to address three key barriers to access: the presumption of citizen self-reliance, limited accessibility of legal aid, and the high costs of legal proceedings. Through a user-centred design and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), voorRecht offers tools to support self-resolution of disputes while also providing structured human assistance for more complex cases. AI-driven features, such as simplified case-law summaries and semantic search functionality, improve the accessibility of legal information for non-experts, empowering citizens to engage with the law more effectively. While voorRecht is still in an iterative phase of development, early insights highlight its potential to reshape access to justice in the Dutch legal system.

Access to justice is a fundamental right, yet for millions of people around the world resolution of legal problems via both formal and informal means is not available, affordable, accessible, or understandable. This chapter explains how artificial intelligence (AI) is making a practical difference in the problems of everyday people through the exploration of three case studies: two expert systems, including both an eviction defence system and a tool to help with a high-volume immigration clinic, and a conversational AI tool that incorporates a large language model to provide legal information to tenants in Illinois. Ultimately, this chapter shows the range of impacts that AI will have on the legal profession, from methods of legal service delivery, to replacing routine legal tasks, or by offering significant support by freeing up resources and providing essential legal assistance to those who might otherwise go without. Through concrete examples and discussions of both benefits and challenges, we invite legal professionals and policymakers to consider AI’s role in creating a more just global legal system.

This chapter examines concerns that AI might replace human judges, potentially compromising the right to a fair trial and other fundamental rule of law values. Rather than dismissing these concerns, we present a balanced analysis of the opportunities and challenges posed by AI-enhanced judicial decision-making. We explore this issue through the lens of Article 6 ECHR, examining potential applications, including case management, evidence collection, and legal interpretation. We emphasise the critical need for transparency and robust safeguards to protect due process rights. Equally significant are questions surrounding perceptions of justice and the maintenance of public trust and legitimacy in judicial proceedings. Even sophisticated AI systems require continuous oversight and human interpretive expertise to ensure that litigants and the broader public perceive the technology and judicial role as efficient, fair, and reliable. The chapter concludes by developing a typology of AI in judiciary – from judicial clerks to bureaucratic judges to R. Dworkin’s idealised ‘Judge Hercules’ – examining how AI can enhance traditional judicial capabilities and improve overall judicial performance.

The evolution of AI presents both challenges and opportunities for courts. To date, most discussion and examination of AI and courts has focused on decision-making tools, reflecting a broader trend in discourse around courts that unduly centres on courts’ adjudicatory functions. Yet courts perform a far wider set of functions and societal roles. This chapter examines the current and potential uses of AI, questions of suitability and ethics, and the challenges and opportunities that arise through this broader consideration of what it is courts actually do, beyond determining disputes. While AI may enhance access to justice, reduce costs, save time, and potentially improve the quality of justice, significant challenges arise, including the potential erosion of judicial respect, inaccuracy, and concerns for the separation of powers. Crucially, court users and the public ought to be more widely consulted in how AI is developed and deployed for courts to achieve better, fairer, and more effective justice.

This chapter begins by exploring the concept of legitimacy, which the CCP regime seeks to achieve in part through its project of legal construction. It employs official data and primary documents to present multiple aspects of access to justice nominally afforded by the legal system: training of a cadre of legal professionals, provision of institutions for dispute resolution—including mediation, petition, and litigation, establishment of state-sponsored legal aid, and implementation of an official campaign to imbue Chinese citizens with legal consciousness. It concludes with an assessment of China’s model of legal development, reviewing arguments about law and order, order maintenance, pure legality, normative and prerogative aspects of the dual state, and legal dualism. The illiberal system of law is a powerful tool in the hands of the party-state.

This chapter addresses the concept of ’receivability’ of complaints to international administrative tribunals, encompassing requirements of both jurisdiction and admissibility. The analysis distinguishes between jurisdiction ratione personae (who can bring claims) and ratione materiae (subject matter), as well as procedural issues like exhaustion of remedies and time limits. By comparing statutory provisions and case law, the chapter identifies common practices across IATs, such as conditions under which non-staff personnel or former staff members may have standing. The chapter underscores how similar approaches have evolved among IATs despite varying statutory constraints.

This chapter explores the growing prevalence of non-staff personnel within the UN system and the legal challenges they face in accessing justice. As non-staff personnel increasingly take on roles traditionally held by staff, they remain largely excluded from the jurisdiction of IATs and often may only avail themselves of arbitration clauses that can be prohibitive in practice. The chapter examines potential legal implications of this situation, such as functional immunity before domestic courts, as well as proposed solutions, such as alternative dispute mechanisms and expedited arbitration. It reviews current UN pilot projects aimed at providing non-staff personnel with informal dispute resolution avenues and discusses potential reforms to bridge the access-to-justice gap.

This chapter canvasses more than 400 decisions across some twenty IATs where references to international human rights instruments have appeared. Interestingly, it emerges that the vast majority of cases in which such instruments are cited concern three substantive areas: non-discrimination, due process rights and economic rights. The chapter therefore focusses on these three areas. It then reviews citations to human rights instruments in a variety of other substantive areas, including privacy rights, expression related rights, the right not to be arbitrarily deprived of nationality, and the right to just and favourable conditions of work. The chapter concludes that while IATs now regularly refer to international human rights instruments, their treatment of this body of law is inconsistent, ranging from some judgments refusing to acknowledge its direct applicability at all to other judgments considering it hierarchically superior to other sources of law.

Chapter 2 explores the constitutive elements of global environmental governance. International environmental governance works when states fulfill the commitments they undertake under international law, such as the obligation to exchange information on transboundary environmental risks and impacts and the duty to notify and consult with other states with regard to such risks and impacts. Mechanisms of global environmental governance include also environmental impact assessments and strategic impact assessments. The chapter examines, furthermore, how the monitoring, control, and surveillance (MCS) of compliance with international environmental obligations has been modernized by the wide application of technologies. It explores whether green democracy has become a universal aspirational principle, and how the system for the protection of human rights has been used as a tool for the protection of the environment, lending support to the emergence of a right to a healthy environment. Whether nature, as a legal entity, should be accorded rights and have a say on the development plans of states is also analyzed.

Lauren van Schilfgaarde (UCLA Law) explains that many Tribal codes allow lay advocates to appear before Tribal courts without requiring them to be state bar members or have attended an ABA-accredited law school. Tribal courts, being extra-constitutional, are not bound by US constitutional requirements, including guarantees for adequate legal representation. Tribes have built justice systems based on Tribal customs, traditions, and community needs. These systems often require cultural competence not provided in American legal education, leading Tribes to develop their own lay advocacy requirements, which are enshrined in Tribal codes that set forth comprehensive requirements and ethical frameworks governing lay advocate practices. The examination of these Tribal codes reveals how lay advocates are an integral part of many Tribes’ justice systems.

Rebecca Haw Allensworth (Vanderbilt Law) argues that the legal services regulatory scheme perversely both over- and under-regulates the legal services marketplace – licensing too few lawyers on the front end and then, on the back end, taking insufficient steps to ensure adequate quality. According to Allensworth, the current system of lawyer regulation bars nonlawyer providers from the system and simultaneously shunts the lowest-quality lawyers into the system’s lower precincts, where the consequences of poor representation are most sharply felt. Allensworth’s lightning bolt of a chapter shows that the challenge of regulatory reform is not just opening the system to new providers but also rethinking how to allocate – and police – the providers already there.

David Freeman Engstrom (Stanford) and Daniel B. Rodriguez (Northwestern) argue that current structure of American legal services regulation, known as “Our Bar Federalism,” is outdated. Fifty states maintain their own rules and regulatory apparatus for a legal profession and industry that are now national and multinational. This fragmented system is a key factor in the American civil justice system’s access-to-justice crisis, where restrictive state rules support the lawyers’ monopoly. With new legal services delivery models and AI, this scheme will seem increasingly provincial and retrograde. This chapter argues it’s time to rethink "Our Bar Federalism," and explore hybrid state-federal regulatory system.