Call for Chapter Proposals: Achieving Open Justice through Citizen Participation and Transparency
On January 2009, President Obama signed the Memorandum on TransparencyAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, transparency occurs when “government-held information (including on activities and decisions) is open, comprehensive, timely, freely available to the pub... More and Open Government that declares the new Administration’s commitmentOGP commitments are promises for reform co-created by governments and civil society and submitted as part of an action plan. Commitments typically include a description of the problem, concrete action... to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government and establishing a system linking three principles: transparency, public participationGiving citizens opportunities to provide input into government decision-making leads to more effective governance, improved public service delivery, and more equitable outcomes. Technical specificatio... and collaboration. Since then, public administrations around the world have embarked on open government initiatives and have worked to redefine their relationship with citizens and with each other. The benefits attributed to open government are many. They include the claims that open government leads to more effective decision making and services, safeguards against corruption, enables public scrutiny, and promotes citizens’ trust in government, included better achievements of effectiveness, efficiency or accountability.
Although many open government initiatives have been implemented around the world, most of them have been related to the executive and legislative powers and institutions. However, open government does not seem to apply to the judiciaryWhile a majority of open government reforms occur within the executive branch, OGP members are increasingly taking on commitments to increase the openness of the judicial branch. Technical specificati... for, maybe, this has always been a “closed” field. As a result, there is a need to know about what open justiceAn open, independent, and impartial justice system serves as a foundation for better access to justice by fulfilling all people’s civil liberties and allowing individuals to more effectively protect... is, to explore its implementation and to understand what it can do to improve government, society and democracy.
The aim of this book is therefore to introduce the concept of open justiceTo address barriers that prevent citizens from having their justice needs met, OGP participating governments are working to expand transparency, accountability, and inclusion into all systems of justi... and to identify and analyze worldwide initiatives that focus on opening the judiciary by making it more transparent, more collaborative and more participative. This is important for open justice is not a new concept. Common Law has traditionally linked it to transparency and public scrutiny in order to guarantee the proper functioning of the courts and the opening of information to the general public. This book goes beyond this classical definition of open justice and intends to apply the three open government principles (transparency but, also, collaboration and participation) to the justice field.
Our ultimate goal is to show that and open government is not enough. We need to talk about an open state and, therefore, to make sure, we guarantee openness in the three state’s branches. No other publication has approached open government from the state perspective emphasizing the need to also have an open justice.
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