Source: https://el.b-ok.org/book/3575123/adae43
Timestamp: 2019-11-15 16:04:36
Document Index: 153978196

Matched Legal Cases: ['art 2', 'art 3', 'arth 1998', 'art2', 'art_2', 'arth 1978']

Ombudsmen and ADR | Naomi Creutzfeldt | download
Κύρια Ombudsmen and ADR
ISBN 13: 978-3-319-78807-4
adr658
ombudsman500
ombudsmen352
dispute resolution178
creutzfeldt163
procedural justice152
informal justice149
legitimacy133
odr95
socialization93
complaints71
complaint69
legal socialization66
perceptions63
legality57
informal justice system55
adr providers55
directive54
complainant50
adr bodies48
redress46
public sector43
institutional41
administrative justice40
private sector34
adr directive33
consumer adr33
sector ombudsmen31
ombudsman model31
quantitative30
attitudes towards30
qualitative29
Security and Privacy in Communication Networks: SecureComm 2017 International Workshops, ATCS and SePrIoT, Niagara Falls, ON, Canada, October 22–25, 2017, Proceedings
INFORMAL JUSTICE IN EUROPE
“Naomi Creutzfeldt breathes new life into ADR scholarship, and in particular into
our understanding of the limits, and potential, of the ombud institution. Combining
ground-breaking empirical research in the UK and Germany with startling theoretical
insight, she cogently demonstrates how our perceptions of what counts as fairness in an
ADR context is decisively shaped by national legal culture. Local legal consciousness and
socialization are thereby exposed as the determinants of trust, and national conceptions of
legality as the conditions of informal justice. This formidable study stands, therefore, as an
exemplar of the interdisciplinary approaches and methodological pluralism the author herself advocates if we are to identify new forms of legal consciousness, more trustworthy forms
of ADR, and, despite national differences, a genuinely transnational ADR space. Law’s conceptual empire, though still bedecked in much of its formal majesty, will rest less securely as
a result of this searching interrogation of the informal ways and means of eluding its grasp.”
—Dr. Nick O’Brien, Hon. Research Fellow, School of Law and Social Justice,
“Dr. Creutzfeldt is the undisputed expert on ombuds practice in Europe. Her pioneering
research combines qualitative and quantitative analysis to provide tremendous insight into
the ways in which individuals experience the ombuds system, as well as the broader implications of their experiences. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the present and
the future of ADR systems.”
—Professor Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff, Washington University, St. Louis, USA
“The ADR Directive created a legal guarantee for consumers to access an ‘informal justice
system’. The aim is to increase consumer confidence in the market and to contribute to the
standardization of the European internal market. This book addresses a shortcoming in the
legislative process: it provides empirical data on consumers’ knowledge of alternative dispute resolution and their assessment. The country comparison also shows how social, cultural and legal peculiarities affect the willingness to use ADR. The author’s carefully designed
fieldwork, as well as the lessons learned and conclusions, make a substantial contribution to
understanding the importance and necessary development of alternative legal protection—
issues that are also relevant in the context of Brexit.”
—Prof. Dr. Günter Hirsch, Insurance Ombudsman, former President of the Supreme Court of
Germany and former Judge of the European Court of Justice
The Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies series is a developing series of monographs
and textbooks featuring cutting edge work which, in the best tradition of
socio-legal studies, reach out to a wide international audience.
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14679
“Consumer ADR remains under-researched and especially empirical insights are missing.
This leads to the omission of important themes in the discourse. It is thus determined by
unrealistic fears rather than actual experiences. Naomi Creutzfeldt sheds some light into
the dark with her study. The design of her study is impressive and the amount of responses
allows for valuable insights: around 3.500 consumers reported their experiences with 14 different ADR providers.The differentiated results are of great value for practitioners for two
reasons. First, they offer important feedback for the improvement of procedures and second,
they offer convincing arguments for consumer ADR and its acceptance. Creutzfeldt’s study
provides a new quality of discussion to be had about consumer ADR and is highly recommended for both practice and academia!”
—Dr. Christof Berlin, Head of Aviation, Conciliation Body for Public Transport
“How people experience Alternative Dispute Resolution processes is likely to become an
increasingly important question in the coming years, as social complexity and constraints
on public funds necessitate the search for alternatives to existing legal frameworks. In this
timely, comprehensive and accessible book, Dr. Creutzfeldt explores the wants, needs and
assessments of the users of Ombudsman services in Germany and UK. Yet she does much
more than this. By drawing out the links - and tensions - between two major bodies of
theory and research, procedural justice theory and the concept of legal socialization, she
shows how the seemingly universal concern for fair process among the users of legal services is mediated and moderated by first, a strong concern with outcomes, and second the
legal culture within which people are socialized and which shapes their understandings of
the processes and procedures used by legal actors. This book should be of interest to scholars
working in both these fields, as well as practitioners across the whole range of public and private bodies seeking to improve existing, or institute new, ADR structures.”
—Ben Bradford, Professor of Global City Policing, UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security
“Naomi Creutzfeldt is a fine scholar whose research has relevance and resonance across the
academic/practitioner divide. Her pioneering work on public attitudes to public trust in
a range of ombudsman services is characterized by rigour, accessibility of style, and strong
comparative analysis. It is rare for scholarly work to be enthusiastically debated in ombudsman circles, but Creutzfeldt’s writing constitutes an important set of considerations for the
ombudsman and administrative justice communities.”
—Rob Behrens, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
A Comparative Study of Informal Justice
ISBN 978-3-319-78807-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78807-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937860
Cover credit: Digital Vision iii/Alamy Stock Photo
In this important book, Ombudsmen and ADR: A Comparative Study of
Informal Justice in Europe, Naomi Creutzfeldt has provided us with one of
the first efforts to understand the meaning of “justice” in non-judicial settings across different legal systems. In seeking to understand how “alternative” (or as we say now, “appropriate”) dispute resolution processes are being
utilized in consumer disputes in Europe, in the forms of both public and
private Ombudsmen, Naomi Creutzfeldt has learned that attitudes toward
informal justice are inextricably connected to how we are socialized in our
home jurisdictions to expectations of legality and justice. Her data and conclusions in this book will have far-reaching impacts on the socio-legal study
of dispute resolution and how ordinary people understand their possibilities in seeking legal redress and also on policy initiatives and dispute system
design as Europe continues to attempt to perfect a single market consciousness for trading across borders.
In a study that combines quantitative and qualitative measures, Naomi
looks at how users of Ombudsman services in private sectors (telecom,
energy, financial services, transport) and public settings (health care, public
services) view the efforts of non-legal third-party dispute “resolvers” to help
them manage disputes about billing, delays in services, and other disputes.
Ombudsmen, originating in an older Scandinavian form of dispute resolution for management of grievances for governmental maladministration,
has now been expanded to include neutral, third-party “helpers” of consumers, of both public services and private products and services in freestanding institutions of consumer redress. These newer Ombudsman institutions
(some sector based; others more general) are one prominent form of dispute
resolution (ADR) that has emerged from the Directives of the European
Union requiring member states to provide expeditious forms of dispute resolution for transborder consumer transactions (EU Directive 2013/11 on
consumer ADR and EU Regulation No. 524/2013 on ODR; see also EU
Directive 2008/52/EC on use of mediation in cross-border commercial
The data presented in this book demonstrate that differences in the
legal systems of the UK and Germany have marked efforts to create dispute systems outside of the legal system. We learn that in Germany the
Ombudsmen services are hierarchical, managed by judges and lawyers,
while those in the UK are more flexible and employ staff who are not necessarily legally trained. Users of the Ombudsman services demonstrate their
expectations are based on their socialization within their own legal systems.
Germans value fair outcomes and want payment and redress. Users from the
UK value process fairness and want to express their “voice” in efforts to prevent bad things from happening to other people.
The data and the arguments presented in this book draw on well-established and traditional concepts in socio-legal studies, procedural justice, legal
consciousness, and legal socialization, but their application to the new processes of “ADR” presents important new findings. Procedural justice may
not be the controlling value in one-off, briefer encounters in seeking legal
redress. When dispute resolution is by telephone or now, increasingly online,
outcome, not “fairness, being heard” process, may be more important in some
settings. This is an important finding and a direct challenge to many conventional claims about the importance of “procedural justice.” As any good
socio-legal scholar can recognize, settings and processes may change what is
valued. It is the variations, as well as the “uniformities,” in human behavior
that we are interested in studying.
The findings of this superb research project have enormous implications
for how we are currently reimagining how dispute resolution and legal
redress may be achieved. Naomi Creutzfeldt reveals that measuring the
“justice” in ADR settings may not be the same as user satisfaction or experiences of “justice” in the court system—if outcomes matter more than process, what might that say about dispute system design? Further, if ordinary
users of Ombudsman services bring their expectations of what they want
from such a system, from their home legal systems, what does that say about
efforts to create transnational dispute resolution mechanisms?
This book poses some important challenges for scholars and policy makers alike—does “ADR” need its own raison d’etre and claims for legitimacy
and acceptability, separate from the formal legal system? How can such a
“culture” of ADR be achieved across so many different processes (e.g., mediation, arbitration, Ombudsmen and other hybrids) and across different legal
cultures in the European Union? Will ODR (online dispute resolution) suffer the same issues as being deracinated from particular legal systems, or will
buying online create a new world of “settling online” without any need for
grand theories of justification and legitimacy? If ADR and ODR have both
been created to improve access to justice for those who cannot afford the
formal legal system, do they reintroduce their own troubles in providing
access to justice—digital literacy and tech/computer access (see Ken Loach’s
2016 movie I, Daniel Blake)?
In my own work, I have argued for recognition for process pluralism, an
acknowledgment that “one size will not fit all” disputes and remedial possibilities. Naomi Creutzfeldt has given us one of the first rigorous studies
of how one form of dispute resolution, varied across geographical and subject-matter spaces, is actually perceived by its users. Whether the users see
Ombudsmen as a new or better process or just another part of the larger
inaccessible legal system remains to be seen. This important book suggests
dispute system designers must study their systems empirically and consider
whether new designs are actually meeting access needs, or merely recapitulating, in a new form, older forms of dissatisfaction with justice-granting
institutions. As Naomi Creutzfeldt suggests, perhaps “justice” is too big a
concept for a quick and simple settlement or readjustment of an energy
bill or miscredited charge account. As she suggests in this book, ADR (and
ODR) will have to create their own story and justifications from “inside
I would like to thank the ESRC FRL for generous funding of my threeyear research project (grant number ES/K00820X/1). It provided the space,
time, and resources for me to be able to go out and continue to explore the
world of ADR in Europe. This book is one of the outputs. Many thanks also
to the Law Faculty in Oxford, the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, and the
Programme for Civil Justice Systems for institutional support.
Huge thanks are due to the many Ombudsmen and their teams who supported my project. Their trust in me and in my research methods opened up
a space that had not been empirically explored by academics before. I was
therefore able to understand people’s encounters with ADR across sectors
and countries better. Findings along with practical recommendations from
my project report have since been implemented into Ombudsmen procedures.
I thank Ben Bradford for his support in making sense of the quantitative dataset and his willingness to stretch his expertise on procedural justice to Ombudsmen. The survey was developed with input from Ben, Nigel
Balmer, and Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff. I thank them for their interest in,
and support of, my project.
In keeping me on track with my writing, I thank Kirsten McConnachie.
Her thoughtful feedback on many draft chapters as part of our writing
exchange kept me accountable and motivated.
Marie Selwood I thank for being such a wonderful and flexible editor and
for being encouraging.
Carrie Menkel-Meadow is an inspiration and amazingly supportive, thank you.
From the bottom of my heart, I thank Ian Loader for making me laugh
and for taking the time to patiently engage in discussions about justice &
ADR and for probing my arguments.
Finally, being able to find “extra time” to write this book, I have to thank
Samuel for being a superstar and clocking far too many hours on devices.
Ombudsmen and Informal Justice		1
Europe’s Justice Systems		11
Models of Ombudsmen		29
Procedural Justice and Legal Consciousness: Questions
of Theory and Method		53
Expectations and Perceptions of Ombudsmen
in a Cross-National Comparison		73
Everyday Assumptions about Ombudsmen		95
The Future of Informal Justice Systems
A European Informal Justice System?		119
Growing Informal Justice (from the Inside-Out)		139
Conclusion: Paths for Theory and Research		155
Annex		161
Bibliography		169
Justice systems—a basic overview placing informal dispute
resolution into context
Public–private divide: outcome-related
Public–private divide: legitimacy
Public and private ombudsmen in this study		 32
Trust in justice		 32
Ombudsmen annual reports on overall satisfaction and outcome		 55
Overview of ADR providers and responses		 59
Motivations for the complaint—procedural justice-related
concerns		77
Motivations for the complaint—outcome-related concerns		 77
Motivations for the complaint—change-related concerns		 78
Willingness to accept the decision—outcome favourability		 78
Willingness to accept the decision—fairness of the procedure		 79
Willingness to accept the decision		 79
Ordinal logistic regression models predicting judgement
of the overall fairness of the procedure (high scores = more fair)		 80
Normative roles that people expect of ombudsmen		 99
This is a book about how ordinary people experience the informal justice
system. Based on an original dataset of recent users of ombudsmen,1 an
institution of the informal justice system, the rapidly developing literature on procedural justice and legal consciousness is taken to a new place.
In combining these theories, I offer a comparative understanding of informal justice systems that are now spreading rapidly across Europe.2 This
book explores consciousness around ‘alternatives’ to formal legality, as
legality constructs ideas about justice. The argument set forth is that people’s expectations of informal justice are rooted in practices of (national)
legal socialization. Posing the question of how everyday assumptions about
law and perceptions of fairness guide our expectations of informal justice,
I argue that the relationships people have with the informal justice system
are shaped by their experiences and preconceptions about how the (formal)
legal system and its agents behave and fulfil that role. As a result, expectations of providers of informal justice are prone to being unrealistic.
recent years the terms Ombudsman, Ombud and Ombuds have all come to be used in the literature
on this topic. I have in fact used Ombuds in other publications (Creutzfeldt and Bradford 2016, 2018;
Gill and Creutzfeldt 2017). However, since the term Ombudsman is an old Norse word and the actual
and well-understood name of the institution I am studying, I have opted for the sake of clarity to use
the term Ombudsman (and the plural Ombudsmen) throughout the book.
2The term informal justice system is used here to draw a distinction between state-administered formal
justice systems and non-state administered informal justice systems (Wojkowska 2006).
N. Creutzfeldt, Ombudsmen and ADR, Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78807-4_1
2   N. Creutzfeldt
This volume develops new insights into the growing field of alternative
dispute resolution (ADR) in general and the role of ombudsmen in particular. ADR takes many forms and has a multitude of meanings in different
contexts. Specifically, I will be examining an institution that provides ADR
in the informal justice system—the ombudsman. The terms ‘ombudsman’
and ‘ADR’ are often used in the same breath, but they are not interchangeable. Ombudsmen are a form of ADR, but not all ADR providers call themselves ombudsmen (more on this in Chapter 2). As my unit of analysis, I
examine users’ perspectives towards different types of ombudsmen. Studying
ombudsmen offers a window into larger questions to do with ADR and
informal justice. Taking examples from the administrative justice and the
civil justice systems, appropriate dispute resolution is explored through the
experiences of users of these systems.3
The book offers fresh insights into sectoral, national and cultural
approaches to dispute resolution. Ombudsmen in my project cover EU-wide
regulated sectors: energy, telecoms and financial services, which allows for
cross-country comparisons. In addition to the private ombudsman models,
I included public ombudsmen in my study for two reasons: firstly, to add to
the richness of comparative empirical data; and, secondly, for a more comprehensive representation of ombudsman models. The data gathered allows
comparisons between public and private sector ADR bodies in the UK and
provides an insight into patterns of national-specific disputing behaviours.
The original project looked at 14 ADR providers in the UK, Germany and
France. It transpired during the data-analysis that the French dataset did not
provide enough comparable data so I decided to exclude France from the
empirical analysis. This leaves the principal focus of the book on the UK and
This book is based upon a rich and original dataset of 2777 recent users
of ombudsmen in Germany and the UK and explores how they experienced
their interaction with institutions of the informal ADR system. This has not
been done before. Making use of both quantitative and qualitative data, the
book focuses on the divide between users’ expectations on the one hand,
and what an ADR (informal justice) system can reasonably deliver on the
other. This is achieved by comparing users’ expressed expectations from my
3This book is based on the discoveries of my project (2013–2016) on ‘Trusting the Middleman: Impact
and Legitimacy of Ombudsmen in Europe’. https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/trusting-middle-man-impact-and-legitimacy-ombudsmen-europe. This work was supported by the Economic and Social
Research Council (ESRC FRL grant number ES/K00820X/1).
­ atasets with EU and national regulations that determine the authority of
the ADR bodies.
Consumer ADR in Europe has been revolutionised as a result of
two broad forces: first, the on-going crisis in funding of civil litigation
through the courts, associated cuts in legal aid and increases in court
and legal fees. Second, the adoption by the EU of consumer ADR as a
principal mechanism for the resolution of consumer–trader disputes
through the creation of a pan-EU network of consumer ADR bodies,
and a cross-border online dispute resolution (ODR) platform. These latter developments are legislated for under Directive 2013/11/EU on consumer ADR and Regulation (EU) No 524/2013 on ODR. Despite the
legislation being implemented quite recently, promising access to justice
in the European single market, little is known about what users of this
ADR system expect from it.
At the time of writing, a relevant topical issue from the perspective of
this book is Brexit. On 23 June 2016 UK citizens voted in a referendum
to decide whether to remain in or to leave the EU. Leave won by 52–48%.
The referendum turnout was 71.8%, with more than 30 million people
voting (Eidenmüller 2016).4 What effect will this development have on
ombudsmen and ADR in the UK? One can only speculate at this point.
However, due to the fact that the ADR legislation has been adopted into
national law and ADR bodies and the ODR platform are already established, it is unlikely that ADR will disappear. ADR has developed in the
UK quite independently of the EU. Therefore, ADR will continue to grow
within the dispute resolution system and assert its place. However, there
will have to be UK-internal proposals on how to further develop ADR
and to consider the relationships and agreements with other ADR providers regarding cross-border complaints. This will surely not be a priority in
the complex negotiations ahead. Disentangling 43 years of agreements and
treaties with the EU will take a significant amount of time. In the meantime, I trust that providing empirical evidence about people’s expectations
of and attitudes towards informal justice systems in different legal cultures
might assist the debate.
also www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32810887; and https://disputeresolutionblog.practicallaw.
com/the-adr-directive-what-impact-has-it-had-so-far-and-how-would-the-adr-market-be-affected-by-abrexit/.
4   N. Creutzfeldt
Trusting the Middle-Man: Impact
and Legitimacy of Ombudsmen in Europe
In this book I have set out to answer two main questions. What explains
users’ perceptions of fairness and trust vis-à-vis ombudsmen institutions?
And how do cultural frameworks influence citizens’ use of ombudsmen? In
order to answer these questions, I have integrated two bodies of literature
that rarely address one another: procedural justice and legal consciousness.
These are brought together through the methodology: a combination of the
large quantitative dataset (of responses to closed questions) on the one hand,
and the richness of responses to the open-ended questions in the survey and
interviews provided country specific narratives on the other.
The comparative strengths of qualitative and quantitative research methods matched the theoretical complexity of the study and helped establish
empirical validity of the data. A structured case study comparison was
conducted in two EU member state countries that were selected to represent diversity of cultural settings with respect to the rule of law: the UK
and Germany. The data was collected through satisfaction surveys, focus
groups, and semi-structured interviews. The survey was aimed at the target
group of ombudsman users who have recently been through the complaints
process. The development of the survey instrument was informed by focus
groups, organized to bring together key stakeholders (ombudsmen, citizens’
advice groups, and consumer associations). The survey was piloted before
it went live. This approach was applied in both investigated countries to
enable sensitivity towards the appropriate cultural and national-specific settings. The local ombudsmen sent out the survey to a random sample of
their customers who had just been through their complaints procedure.
As a follow-up to the survey, semi-structured interviews with users as well
as ombudsmen in each location provided a richer understanding of people’s perceptions, including the opportunity to explore further the cultural
The first question (about fairness perceptions) was based on quantitatively
exploring procedural justice in a new context by measuring people’s perceptions of an ombudsman procedure. This study is not looking at how public
authorities or complained about bodies perceive the ombudsman. The focus
is on the user of the system. The second question (about cultural frameworks), guided by qualitative considerations, uncovers differences in cultural
approaches to ADR. The data suggest that the way people view ombudsmen
is informed by their assumptions about legality, and I argue this is shaped by
their legal socialization (Trinkner and Tyler 2016). The construction of legal
attitudes reflects people’s evaluations and expectations of a system and its
institutions. Legal consciousness is explored in this context as an approach
that helps to uncover cultural specificities (Merry 1990; Ewick and Silbey
1998; Halliday and Morgan 2013; Morgan and Kutch 2016).
People’s expectations and acceptance of informal justice are based on
experiencing a fair procedure (Tyler 2006). However, this is only one aspect
of the complex set of expectations that condition people’s relationship with
informal justice. This experience is also informed by legal socialization
through national and cultural contexts developed when growing up. Legal
socialization influences how we expect legal authorities to make decisions,
how those authorities should treat us, and lay beliefs about the boundaries
of legal authority. In other words, although ADR is a system that provides
informal dispute resolution, people who use this system do not share an
informal socialization of the system and therefore exhibit distinct patterns
of expectations of the system. These patterns are based on people’s everyday
encounters with and expectations of the formal legal system. This, I contend, is expressed and can be empirically explored through people’s legal
consciousness. The quality of the encounters with the informal system will
have an impact on legitimacy of an ADR procedure and affect users’ trust.
Trust can be empirically understood as expectations about current and
future behaviour—where positive experiences encourage trusting behaviour
(Jackson and Gau 2016). In order to understand and comment on how trust
can be built and maintained in an informal justice system it is necessary to
unpack what users of that system expect and from where these expectations
arise. In this book I shed light on how people who use ADR make sense of it
and what this means for national and European informal justice.
Chapter 2: Europe’s Justice Systems
This chapter provides an overview of Europe’s justice systems and introduces
the consumer ADR directive and the regulation on ODR—these form the
basis of the fundamental, EU-wide change to the informal dispute resolution landscape. It includes an outline of what the implementation of these
6   N. Creutzfeldt
new rules into national (UK and Germany) ADR infrastructure means for
the justice systems. The implementation into national frameworks signifies different things in different jurisdictions and needs to be disentangled.
I argue that, for the legitimacy of the new legislative framework for ADR/
ODR to be accepted, it needs to be understood in a national context and
through its relationship with the formal legal system.
Chapter 3: Models of Ombudsmen
In this chapter, I discuss the implementation of the consumer ADR directive
in national legal spaces. This legislation is very recent and, most systems and
their users still need to become aware of, and accustomed to, this developing
regime. I argue that for ombudsmen to be accepted and trusted as part of a
system of justice, they have to be understood in their national context. In so
doing, I discuss the country case studies and highlight similarities and differences in the development of ADR bodies. I discuss national and cultural
distinctions in the legal systems, as well as those between public and private ombudsmen. Every member state has its own traditions and legal systems that have formed their populations’ approaches to disputes, attitudes
to institutions and expectations of those institutions. I argue that the relationships we form with authorities influence the relationships discussed in
this chapter: specifically, those between the citizen and the state and those
between consumers and a business. These relationships are established and
develop through our legal culture.
Chapter 4: Theorizing Procedural Justice and Legal
In this Chapter, I introduce the theoretical and methodological approach.
I start by discussing how the theory of procedural justice is brought to a
new setting and how it requires an extended methodology to more fully
understand what people expect from an ADR body. Here, legal socialization
and legal consciousness are proposed as concepts to enhance the procedural
justice findings in the data. The argument I advance in this chapter is that,
to get a better understanding of people’s expectations, attitudes, and perceptions of fairness towards/within a system of informal justice, a mixed-­
methods approach facilitates an examination of unexplored areas. This
approach is able to provide a richer account of what is happening in
e­ veryday encounters with institutions of the informal justice system. In sum,
this chapter lays out the theoretical and methodological considerations for
the empirical evidence to follow in part two.
Part 2: Empirical Discoveries
Chapter 5: Expectations and Perceptions of Ombudsmen in a
In this Chapter, I take the rich quantitative dataset and discuss people’s
attitudes towards an ombudsman. I show how these matter in relation to
building trust and legitimacy in the ombudsman institution. Theories of
procedural justice create the framework for the examination. Applied to a
new context, the theory of procedural justice is critically analysed. I find
that, despite the strong evidence on the importance of procedural justice to the legitimacy of authorities and resulting rule-abiding behaviour
in this context, outcome also matters. I conclude by indicating the limits
of the quantitative analytical framework and expand the inquiry through
a qualitative layer that helps better understand respondents’ self-reported
perceptions. This leads into the argument of the next chapter: that legal
socialization and legal consciousness explain what motivates people to think
and act the way they do when interacting with a justice system.
Chapter 6: Everyday Assumptions about Ombudsmen
In this chapter, I introduce a further dimension to the analysis through the
qualitative data. I suggest that we need to consider legal socialization and
legal consciousness to get a better understanding of why we act the way we
do when engaging with an ombudsman procedure. In a cross-cultural comparison, the ombudsman, as a model of justice, is explored. I argue in this
chapter that people’s relationship with the law plays a crucial part in how
they negotiate their way through, and engage with, the informal system.
To explore this proposition, the notion of legal socialization provides fertile
ground when combined with the qualitative data. Here, narratives of legal
consciousness are discussed. I explore how people’s legal socialization and
legal consciousness frames their understanding of an ombudsman procedure.
I conclude that the formal legal system is likely to serve as a benchmark to
shape attitudes towards the informal system.
8   N. Creutzfeldt
Part 3: The Future of the Informal Justice System
Chapter 7: A European Informal Justice System?
In this Chapter, I question how we construct ideas of justice in ADR and
ODR. The notion of an informal justice system is understood through the
role the EU plays and the form of justice that ADR and ODR provide.
Alongside this discussion, the concept of access to justice is revisited. I argue
that there is no tangible system of informal justice in the EU. I explore how
ADR as a model of justice can be meaningful and accepted throughout the
EU if it is defined by its national implementation. I conclude that at present people are still negotiating the legitimacy of ADR/ODR and that the
acceptance of ADR into everyday practice is far from visible.
Chapter 8: Growing Informal Justice
In this chapter, I argue that the development and proliferation of ADR in
Europe for providing high-quality procedures and outcomes needs to be
addressed from the inside-out. ADR, at its best, can contribute to access
to justice and has the potential to be a model of dispute resolution that
embraces users’ notions of a just and fair procedure. ADR models then have
to be designed to reflect values and ethical standards that go hand in hand
with users’ attitudes.
Does ADR (need to) create its own norms of fairness, justice and language? Thinking about justice, fairness, trust and legitimacy, questions guiding our future inquiries could include: do our traditional values and roles
within our justice system have to be reconsidered? Do we need new measures and tools to create appropriate protection for actors and users in these
new and rapidly growing spaces? How can we best understand these areas of
little regulation and large complexity that cannot fully be captured by traditional methods, models and language?
Chapter 9: Paths for Theory and Research
In the conclusion, I briefly revisit my main argument that we need to grow
and focus on ADR within the national cultural context and only then it
might mature into a European space. I propose three areas that require more
attention in the continued study of informal justice and ombudsmen in
Europe. These are: the way in which ADR providers’ systems are designed;
the need to look out for vulnerable users; and the challenge of the digital.
Europe combines a collection of national justice systems (or legal traditions).
For these systems to be measured for effectiveness, the EU Justice
Scoreboard has been put in place to regularly evaluate these systems with
reference to their timeliness, independence, affordability and user-friendly
access.1 They are applied not only to national court systems but also to
alternative dispute resolution (ADR). One of the trends the scoreboards
have shown is that ADR is incentivised and promoted in all member states.
This ranges from civil and commercial to labour and consumer disputes.
Generally speaking, ADR is recognized as a valid pathway to access justice
in the European space. European legislators are therefore promoting ADR to
support access to justice for consumers in the EU single market.
This chapter provides an overview of Europe’s justice systems and introduces the consumer ADR directive and the regulation on online dispute ­resolution (ODR) these form the basis of the fundamental, EU-wide
change to the informal dispute resolution landscape. This chapter includes
an outline of what the implementation of these new rules into national
(UK and Germany) ADR infrastructure means for the justice systems. This
implementation into national frameworks means different things in different jurisdictions and needs to be disentangled for the empirical analysis to
follow. Thus, in this chapter, I provide the context for my argument that,
1http://ec.europa.eu/justice/effectivejustice/files/justice_scoreboard_2016_en.pdf.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78807-4_2
12   N. Creutzfeldt
WULEXQDOV
RWKHU$'5
SURYLGHUV
RPEXGVPHQ
LQIRUPDOGLVSXWH
UHVROXWLRQ
V\VWHP$'5
FRXUWV
SULVRQV
IRUPDOGLVSXWH
UHVROXWLRQV\VWHP
SROLFH
MXVWLFHV\VWHP
OHJDOV\VWHP
FLYLOFRPPRQODZ
DGPLQLVWUDWLYHFULPLQDOFLYLO
Fig. 2.1 Justice systems—a basic overview placing informal dispute resolution
for the legitimacy of the new legislative framework for ADR/ODR to be
accepted, it needs to be understood in a national context and through its
relationship with the formal legal system.
The term ‘justice system’ is understood here as an overarching framework of
which the legal system is a part (see Fig. 2.1). A legal system is made up of
an operative set of legal institutions, procedures and rules. It is a broad term
that defines the laws we have, the processes for making those laws, and the
processes for ensuring that the laws are followed. Our justice system reflects
how people behave and how we (as a country) expect people, organizations
and governments to behave towards each other. The institutions of any given
justice system that are responsible for looking after citizens’ grievances can
generally be divided into those providing formal redress/solutions and those
offering informal ones. The formal structure of the system to address people’s grievances is made up of courts, judges, the police and prisons. Whereas
the informal structure is made up of institutions that offer pathways to
settlement combining various techniques of ADR (Creutzfeldt 2013).
The extent to which the informal ADR system is integrated alongside the
formal legal system into the national justice system varies from country to
country. To understand everyday social interactions with the justice system, the relationship between formal and informal needs to be unpacked
in its national context. This chapter provides a brief overview of legal traditions and justice systems in Europe and then introduces EU legislation on
ADR and ODR. This is the legal framework that underpins a developing
European informal justice system.
Civil and Common Law Traditions
Broadly speaking in Europe there are two types of legal system—the common law and the civil law traditions—each with its own heritage (Stein
1992). The common law tradition developed in the Middle Ages in England
and also applied in the British colonies (ibid.: 167). The civil law tradition
developed in parallel in continental Europe and extended to the colonies of
European imperial powers. The main differences are that the common law
is uncodified. This means that it is largely based on judicial decisions on
similar cases (precedent). These precedents are collated in collections of case
law. Civil law, on the other hand, is codified. Each country’s legal code exists
in a continuous loop of updating and is specific to all matters that can be
brought to a court (including procedure and punishment). These codes differentiate between different categories of law: procedural law, substantive law
and penal law (Wranken 2015).
The UK has a common law tradition (Stein 1992; Lewis 1995; Pound
1999), whereas Germany has a civil law tradition (Groves 2017). Despite
the different heritages of their legal systems, the countries examined in this
book share broad classifications in their justice systems; these are criminal justice, administrative justice and civil justice.2 The following analysis provides a basic overview of administrative and civil justice systems
and their overall purpose. This sets the scene for the latter part of this
chapter and the context of the book, namely, informal justice, ADR and
­ombudsmen—located in the administrative and civil justice systems.3
a detailed comparison of the various distinctions between these systems, see Head (2011).
the sake of completeness, I briefly outline the criminal justice system:
The criminal justice system is made up of a number of agencies, each responsible to a government
department. These agencies typically are: legislative (law-making), police (law enforcement), adjudicative (courts) and corrective (prisons, probation, parole) (Dammer and Albanese 2010). The criminal
14   N. Creutzfeldt
The administrative justice system also possesses its own set of institutions,
rules and procedures. These are courts and tribunals, internal complaints
reviews and ombudsmen. The administrative justice system (in its widest sense) can be defined as the ‘combination of (1) initial decision-making
by public bodies affecting people’s rights and interests, including the substantive rules under which decisions are made, the procedures followed in
making decisions; and (2) systems for resolving disputes relating to such
decisions and for considering citizens’ grievances’ (Administrative Justice
Steering Group 2009: 2).
Public bodies, including central and local government, make countless decisions every year that directly affect the lives of individual people.
Administrative justice work focuses on fairness in the process for making these important decisions, the law that regulates public decision-making, and the ability to challenge public bodies that get it wrong (including
ombudsmen, tribunals and courts).4
Mashaw (1983: 24) defines the administrative justice system as ‘the
qualities of a decision process that provide arguments for the acceptability of its decisions.’ Adler (2006) provides an excellent account of its
strengths and weaknesses and modifies Mashaw’s model, with a focus on
fairness and its meaning in the context of administrative decision-­making.
Adler also offers an extended analytical framework, based on empirical data (ibid.: 621ff). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to apply
the models as analytical frameworks in this context. Rather my aim is to
place the discussion about ombudsmen into the context of administrative
The final report of the Administrative Justice Steering Group (2009: 2)
legal system’s aim is to punish wrongdoers for offences against society as a whole. If criminal justice
is seen as a form of governance, its role involves imposing social order and acting as a mechanism for
resolving disputes; it is also a technique for managing risk (Zedner 2004: 2). This system, like other systems, is built around a set of values and principles. The term ‘criminal justice system’ is also commonly
used descriptively to refer to all those agents, institutions and practices entrusted with responding to
crime. Broadly speaking, it concerns the relationships between the individual, the citizen and the state.
The criminal justice system can be described as a ‘dedicated form of justice that applies in relation to
criminal cases as opposed to civil, family, or administrative matters – and that has its own laws, principles, rules, procedures, codes, practices and thinking’ (Gibson and Cavadino 2008: 9).
4http://justice.org.uk/our-work/areas-of-work/administrative-justice-system/.
The benefits of this broad definition [of administrative justice] are that it
delimits a coherent field of inquiry and enables discussion of administrative
justice to respond to the full range of citizens’ concerns about their interaction
The report concludes by stating the aims of an administrative justice system
to be threefold:
• ensuring public bodies get it right the first time when making decisions;
• ensuring that, where decisions are incorrect or treatment of citizens is
otherwise defective, there are effective redress mechanisms; and
• ensuring that public bodies learn from their mistakes, increasing the likelihood of getting it right the first time (ibid.: ii).
Within the system of administrative justice, public sector ombudsmen typi­
cally recommend a course of action with a ‘win–win’ outcome in mind—a
friendly solution. An ombudsman system can collect complaint data, detect
systemic problems and provide feedback to the local authorities, central government and health authorities to keep them in check. Ideally, an ombudsman becomes a moral authority by being fair, independent and accepted by
institutions and users. Generally speaking, as Gill (2011) finds, ombudsmen
are now expected to play a more active role in improving administrative
decision-making by helping public officials learn from their mistakes.
Taken in its broadest sense, the aim of the civil justice system is to regulate relationships between individuals. Civil justice is a way for individuals
to achieve a fair solution when they have been injured or harmed due to
another person’s negligence, recklessness, or malpractice. In other words, the
civil justice system allows individuals to hold others accountable for their
actions.5 There are several avenues to do this. As Genn suggests: ‘There are
many stakeholders in civil justice systems and a wide variety of civil justice
problems’ (2010: 5). It is difficult to conceptualise civil justice systems, as
compared to criminal justice systems (or administrative justice systems)
because of their complexity and undefined margins. However, generally
speaking, ‘the machinery of civil justice sustains stability and economic
5http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-civil-justice-definition-process-rules.html.
16   N. Creutzfeldt
growth by providing public processes for peacefully resolving civil disputes,
for enforcing legal rights and for protecting private and personal rights’
(Genn 2012: 3).
An important part of a civil justice system is concerned with everyday life,
involving a rich and complex variety of problems. In this sense, the civil justice system ‘has a significant social purpose and needs to deliver just outcomes by means of procedures that are fair and that are perceived to be so by
its users, a system that delivers justice and enjoys public confidence’ (Genn
2010: 78). This is where ADR enters the justice landscape: ‘ADR is exciting in part because it allows and encourages us to move beyond our existing [formal legal] conceptions. Without abandoning what is precious about
our legal system, we must also be open to new possibilities as we begin to
rethink our approach to procedural justice’ (Sternlight 2003: 304). Before
embarking on the discussion of procedural justice (see Chapter 4), I will first
clarify the institutions of the informal justice system in Europe with which
this book is concerned.
Informal Justice and ADR
The ideal of informal justice has been described by Roberts and Palmer
(2005: 10) as: ‘non-bureaucratic, local, accessible for ordinary people, reliant on lay people as third party interveners, outside the immediate scope
of official law, based on substantive and procedural “rules”, intent on promoting harmony’. Informal justice, then, is aimed at resolving certain types
of problems where institutions of the formal justice system are failing to
provide effective remedies. This translates into the criteria against which
institutions that provide informal justice are measured: timeliness and effectiveness; impartiality and independence. ADR as a form of informal justice
is expected to deliver these measures in its procedures and its interactions
with people using the system.
ADR, as part of the informal justice system, ‘is not, an entirely separate
legal order, rather it is an enclave within a broader culture in which liberal
legal ideology is well institutionalised’ (Sarat and Garth 1998: 17). I build
on this notion to shape my understanding of ADR and informal justice as
part of the overall system providing justice. It is a collection of mechanisms
that provide ADR. They constitute an additional pathway for citizens/consumers to obtain information and advice, seek redress for their grievance,
and ultimately come out of the process with a feeling of being treated fairly
and better understanding the informal process towards dispute resolution
(see Chapter 4). What makes understanding ADR more complicated is
that it functions as an umbrella term that covers a variety of techniques and
approaches to resolving disputes in all kind of different settings. How then
is the appropriate approach chosen for a specific dispute resolution setting?
Menkel-Meadow (2016) suggests that:
… not every dispute or conflict should be handled in the same way, so we
now talk of ‘process pluralism.’ Much of our choice about what is ‘appropriate’ depends on who we are having a conflict with (a friend, family member,
stranger, the government, an organization, a number of parties, organizations or countries) and what the dispute is about (a scarce resource, like land
or property or money, or something we could share, or something we want
to do that is new rather than routine (for which we could use a formal
Having briefly engaged with some of the complexities that ADR presents
(terminology, understanding and context), I want now to do two things:
first, to situate ADR (as part of the informal justice system) within the wider
national justice system alongside the formal justice system; second, to narrow the ADR focus to problems people encounter with institutions in civil
and commercial disputes (consumer to business) and administrative justice
disputes (citizen and state). An ADR body that has proven to stand the test
of time and cultural diversity is the ‘ombudsman model’ (Creutzfeldt 2018).
This is the focus of study in this book and will provide a window into a
broader understanding of the informal justice system.
ADR and the Ombudsman Context
One of the established models that provide ADR is the ombudsman
(details of how these models differ and sit within their national architecture are discussed in Chapter 3). At this stage, thinking about justice systems, it is important to understand where the ombudsmen in this study
are situated. Generally speaking public sector ombudsmen are found as
part of the administrative justice system and private sector ombudsmen
are part of the civil justice system (Seneviratne 2002; Buck et al. 2011;
Hodges et al. 2012).
The boundaries between public and private ombudsmen can be blurry.
Depending on what measures we choose, they could be based on the functions they carry out, their powers, their jurisdictions, or the types of ­problems
18   N. Creutzfeldt
they deal with. There can be many different answers and approaches to
classifying this distinction, depending on the context. For the purpose of
my study, the public–private divide follows the ADR/ODR legislation for
private ADR providers in the civil justice system and public ombudsmen
that are part of the administrative justice landscape in the UK (more in
Despite the significance of ombudsmen to our constitutional and civil
justice landscapes, little is known about users’ perceptions of the fairness of
procedures and practices, and the significance of these perceptions for levels
of trust in particular ombudsman offices. This book makes a start on plugging these gaps.
The rapid expansion of the ombudsman enterprise across the public and
private sectors (a phenomenon Harlow and Rawlings (2009) have termed
ombudsmania ) has brought with it a blossoming of institutional and jurisdictional arrangements, operational styles and decision-making processes
(Pound 1906). Although this poses some challenges in conceptualising a
unified ombudsman institution, it offers distinct advantages for the study of
the relationship between decision-making practices on the part of ombudsmen, perceptions of procedural justice, and levels of trust on the part of
users across different jurisdictions and cultures. The principal advantage is
that this area of comparative ADR research is yet to be explored and this
book offers a unique approach, and starting point, to understanding what
users of ADR institutions expect.
One of the aims of ombudsmen is to create and sustain public trust in
institutions of government (public ombudsmen) and in the marketplace
(private ombudsmen). A lack of public trust has become a ‘cliché of our
times’ (O’Neill 2002: 9). How can a body that provides informal dispute resolution also provide a remedy that builds trust? Public trust in the
ombudsman, as Behrens (2015: 5) suggests, has four key elements (perceived honesty and independence, core competence in delivery of service,
development of strong internal culture fostering standards, and establishing active trust and trustworthy behaviour by professionals. These chime in
with procedural justice criteria (see Chapter 5). If these elements are successfully conveyed to a user of an ADR model then this will build trust in
ADR is not a new approach. The notion of ADR has its roots in ancient
traditions going back many centuries (Hodges et al. 2012). In fact, over time
ADR has been prioritized within some civil procedure systems. In England
and Wales, for example, ADR was given an institutional and functionally
important position within civil procedure as a result of the Woolf Reforms
of 1996,6 implemented as of 1999.7 Lord Woolf ’s review of the procedures
and rules of the civil courts in England and Wales aimed to improve access
to justice. He suggested this be done by three means: reducing the costs of
litigation; simplifying the procedural rules and modernising terminology;
and removing unnecessary complexities in the litigation process. In other
words, this connected ADR with civil justice reform and thus with the formal framework of civil procedure (Jackson 2016). An additional EU-wide
drive for integration of mediation into European civil procedure systems
occurred through the Mediation Directive 2008/52/EC (Hopt and Steffek
2012). Its purpose is to build trust in the process of mediation within the
EU. The directive notes a number of advantages of mediation over litigation, including that cost-effectiveness, flexibility and the fact that agreements
reached through mediation are more likely to be adhered to voluntarily
without further recourse to the courts.
Abraham (2008) argued that ombudsmen deserve to be seen as a system
of justice in their own right, albeit one that is different from, but complementary to, the courts and tribunals. Whilst Abraham is referring to public sector ombudsman, the ‘ombudsman brand’ has also been imported
into the private sector, which, in my opinion, has opened up an opportunity to merge the debate about ombudsmen and their overarching purpose
(Creutzfeldt 2018).
In contrast, consumer ADR is not well known. As will be shown later
in the book, consumer ADR has developed in its own unique space, with
its own design. At its best, it is intended as a pathway to justice that provides remedies and redress for low-value consumer claims. As outlined in
Chapter 3, ADR can take many forms and is used as an umbrella term to
include many different models of dispute resolution. Consumer ADR is not
a competitor or replacement of the courts; rather it is an added avenue for
accessing justice (Creutzfeldt 2013, 2016). In other words, ADR is a dispute
resolution model, aimed at settlement and designed for a particular type of
dispute. The disputes I am focusing on are those of consumers and business
in the private sector, as well as those between citizens and public authorities
Despite the differing nature of disputes brought to private and public
ombudsmen (from overcharged utility bills to a wrongdoing in a nursing
6Woolf
Reforms and the Civil Procedure Rules 1998. Accessed 15 November 2017. https://www.insolvencydirect.bis.gov.uk/technicalmanual/Ch13-24/Chapter19/part2/part_2.htm.
7Not to mention the whole process of tribunalisation in the early twentieth century.
20   N. Creutzfeldt
home: see Chapter 3), they offer similar escalating procedural steps. These
steps usually commence with a triage function at first contact (online platform, email or phone), where the admissibility of complaints is assessed.
Many of the contacts are requests for information and are usually re-directed
to the service provider about whom the complaint has been made, as their
internal complaints process has to be unsuccessfully completed before the
ombudsman can be involved. If a complaint is ripe and admissible to the
ombudsman, then it travels through the various stages of investigation. At
every stage the complaint handlers/case workers seek to find a settlement
between the complainant and the service provider. The next stage is usually
an early evaluation and possible resolution, mutually accepted settlement
and as a final outcome an ombudsmen adjudication (Creutzfeldt 2014). The
stage a complaint reaches varies according to the case dealt with and the type
of ombudsman involved. Generally speaking though, most cases do not go
as far as a final ombudsman decision, typically getting settled before that.8
The ombudsman, as part of the legal system, provides another avenue to
access justice (Seneviratne 2005: 181).
Access to justice has emerged as a social right. According to Cappelletti
and Garth (1978: 182) effective access to justice can be seen as the most
basic requirement, the most basic human right of a system which purports
to guarantee legal rights. This system must be equally accessible to all and
lead to results that are individually and socially just. Put differently, effective access to justice can be considered as the most basic element of a system which promises to uphold legal rights.9 Access to justice, therefore, is a
complex matter and does not simply equate to legal aid, for example. ‘Access
to justice includes access to courts, lawyers, advice agencies, the police, and
ombudsmen. It means public authorities behaving properly. It means everyone having some basic understanding of his or her rights. It means making
law less complex and more intelligible’ (Moorhead 2011).
The phrase ‘access to justice’ is a political, legal and rhetorical symbol of undeniable power and attractiveness (Cappelletti and Garth 1978;
Cappelletti 1981). Cappelletti (1981) described access to justice as consisting
for example, the annual reports of the various ombudsmen for more details and figures.
9http://justice.org.uk/our-work/areas-of-work/access-to-justice/.
of three waves of change, especially with a focus on its development in the
USA (and most Western countries post-Second World War). The first wave
contains reforming institutions to provide legal services for the poor (emergence of legal aid); the second wave extends representation to diffuse interests
(consumers or environmentalists—collective rights); the third wave questions
the effectiveness of dispute-resolving institutions and examines less formal
alternatives to traditional courts—the emergence of a fully developed access
to justice approach.
This book rides on the third wave and focuses on alternative pathways
to dispute resolution. Wrbka (2015: 278) described ‘access to justice 2.0’ as
‘the quest for a legal framework that tries to ensure that consumer interests
are safeguarded to the best possible extent by identifying and implementing certain parameters.’ EU-wide measures were taken to boost consumer
confidence in the internal market, to encourage cross-border trade and promote access to justice. This led to the development of a new comprehensive
approach to resolve problems in contemporary Europe through introducing
consumer protection tools: the ‘ADR directive’ and the ‘ODR regulation’.
The New Landscape of Civil Justice in Europe
European legislators frequently promote ADR to support access to justice
for consumers in the EU single market (Hodges et al. 2012; Creutzfeldt
2013). The 2011 European Commission ‘Special Eurobarometer’10 reports
that one in five consumers have encountered a problem with goods and services purchased in the EU; this adds up to a reported detriment of about
0.4% of EU gross domestic product. Most consumers complain to the traders but, if they are unsuccessful in getting their complaint resolved, they
typically do nothing. Two recent pieces of EU legislation are intended to
counter this trend and to encourage consumers to access justice more easily
through ADR and ODR.
In 2013, European legislators passed the directive on consumer ADR
(2013/11/EU) (the ADR directive) and the regulation on ODR (EU)
524/2013 (the ODR regulation).11 Laying the foundations for the 2013
10European Commission, ‘Special Eurobarometer 342: Consumer Empowerment’ (2011): http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_342_en.pdf.
11Directive 2013/11/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 May 2013 on alternative dispute resolution for consumer disputes, amending Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 and Directive
2009/22/EC (Directive on Consumer ADR) [2013] OJ L165/63; Regulation (EU) No 524/2013
of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 May 2013 on online dispute resolution for
22   N. Creutzfeldt
legislation (without binding principles), two European Commission
recommendations on ADR were passed in 1998 and 2001.12 Then,
in 2008, the mediation directive—aimed at court and extra-judicial
­proceedings—was passed.13 Since then, ADR has developed at different speeds in different sectors, particularly in the regulated sectors (e.g.
financial services, energy, telecoms) where ADR became compulsory, and
it has encouraged the development of specialized networks (ECC-Net,
FIN-Net).14
The consumer ADR directive ensures that consumers and traders can turn
to an ADR entity for all their contractual disputes in virtually all economic
sectors—except for healthcare and education—no matter where (domestically or across borders) and how (online/offline) the purchase was made.
The ODR regulation aims at facilitating the use of ADR for disputes arising from online purchases (Cortes and Lodder 2014). The new legislation
(implemented in 2015) was aimed at ensuring full ADR coverage, high
quality ADR bodies, easy access to the right ADR body, and a means of submitting and resolving disputes online through an EU wide platform.15 The
current status of this ambitious legislation will be empirically explored in
The new legislative framework aims to improve consumer protection
and enforce consumer rights in the EU single market. Some commentators
are doubtful of this soft law approach and claim it is aimed at ultimately
consumer disputes and amending Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 and Directive 2009/22/EC
(Regulation on consumer ODR) [2013] OJ L165/1.
12Commission Recommendation 98/257/EC of 30 March 1998 on the principles applicable to the
bodies responsible for out-of-court settlement of consumer disputes. Commission Recommendation
2001/310/EC of 4 April 2001 on the principles for out-of-court bodies involved in the consensual resolution of consumer disputes [2001] OJ L 109/56.
13Directive 2008/52/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 May 2008 on certain
aspects of mediation in civil and commercial matters [2008] OJ L 136/3.
14The year 2015 marked 10 years since the European Commission, together with national governments, established a network of European Consumer Centres (ECC) in all 28 member states of the
European Union, Norway and Iceland (the ECC-Net). The ECC-Net promotes the understanding
of EU consumers’ rights and assists in resolving complaints about purchases made in another country of the network, when travelling or shopping online. ‘European Consumer Centres’ (European
Commission: Consumers, 2015): http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/solving_consumer_disputes/non-judicial_redress/ecc-net/index_en.htm; ‘Welcome to FIN-NET’ (Financial Dispute Resolution Network):
http://ec.europa.eu/finance/fin-net/index_en.htm.
15See the ODR platform: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/odr/main/index.cfm?event=main.home.
show&lng=EN.
Europeanising consumer law (Schulte-Nölke 2015). This is coupled with the
fear of the reduction in the number of cases brought to courts (resulting in
no case law) and a rush towards privatised justice (Eidenmüller and Engel
2014). These worries will be further considered in Chapter 6.
In the post-implementation period in which this book is being written,
attention is paid to culture and the specific relationships and expectations
that we have towards ADR procedures. This varies between some member states with an existing and developed ADR culture or socialization (see
Chapter 3) and other member states where ADR is an unfamiliar (and
therefore less trusted) approach (for an examination of the different implementation stages see Creutzfeldt 2015, 2016). One of the central claims
I make in this book is that the distinct national context (legal system) in
which ADR is situated will influence its acceptance. Therefore, despite its
overarching goal of assisting people to access justice in the European space,
we need to understand how institutions of the informal system are integrated and accepted at the national level.
The following section moves into the national space and provides an
overview of the justice systems of the countries considered in this book: the
UK and Germany. The focus here is to highlight relationships between the
courts (representing the formal legal system) and ADR, thereby starting to
tease out the cultural nuances that will be discussed in more detail throughout the next chapters as the book unfolds.
The UK has three jurisdictions: England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern
Ireland. Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) is responsible for the administration of many of the courts in England and Wales. The
HMCTS is an agency of the Ministry of Justice, the government department overseeing the justice system in England. Different courts are set up
to hear different cases. Criminal cases in England and Wales are heard in
the magistrates’ courts, the Crown Court and the criminal division of the
Court of Appeal. Civil cases in England and Wales are mainly heard in the
county courts, the High Court and the civil division of the Court of Appeal,
with magistrates’ courts having jurisdiction for a range of applications made
under various pieces of legislation. The UK Supreme Court is the final court
of appeal in the UK for both criminal and civil cases, although this right of
appeal does not apply to Scottish criminal cases.
24   N. Creutzfeldt
Consumer claims are dealt with in civil courts and these are split into
three tracks depending on the value of the claim.16 For claims under the
value of £10,000, the small claims track is available. For these cases consumers are usually not legally represented, preferring to bring a lay representative
or represent themselves. There are costs involved and the small claims system
is not as popular as was anticipated (Hodges et al. 2012). This is where ADR
can become a very attractive alternative, especially since, after exhausting the
ADR process, the path to court remains an option.
The courts in the UK that can be approached with consumer problems
are known to be overstretched, have long waiting times, and are unpredictable in cost (legal representation), duration, and case outcomes (Hodges et al.
2012). In addition, taking a case to court amplifies the problem in a person’s life in a way that is usually disproportionate to the value of the claim.
Studies have shown that people do not go to a court for a dispute that is
worth less than €500.17 This means that low-value consumer complaints do
not often find their way to court. This is one of the misconceptions about
the ADR and ODR legislation—it does not aim to take cases away from
the courts, rather it aims to provide additional pathways to justice for complaints that would otherwise not be heard.
The ADR landscape in the UK, as in other European member states, has
transitioned into a regulated space since the implementation of the ADR directive into national law. There is a range of different ADR models (covering the
regulated and unregulated sectors),18 offering a variety of procedures and outcomes (Creutzfeldt 2016c). However, the bottom line is that, despite there
being a wide offering of ADR methods, consumers remain either unaware of
ADR or confused as to which provider is responsible for what. To ease consumer
access to ADR, the UK was initially thinking about creating a single consumer
ombudsman but this did not materialize due to competition amongst the existing ADR providers as to who might fill this role. The government decided to
leave the market open for ADR providers to compete. This has now produced
an ADR landscape in the UK that is not only difficult to impossible for consumers to navigate, but has also created a space for exploitation of the market.19
16Claims of up to £10,000 are put in the small claims track; claims of £10,000–25,000 are usually put
in the fast track; claims over £25,000 are put in the multi-track.
17European Commission (Special Eurobarometer 342) consumer empowerment; available at: http://
ec.europa.eu/consumers/consumer_empowerment/docs/report_eurobarometer_342_en.pdf.
18Regulated sectors: financial services, energy, legal services, aviation, rail, postal services and water.
Unregulated sectors: second-hand cars, retail, property, travel and estate agents.
19For example: claims management firms, more than one ADR provider serving the same sector, and
crossover in ombudsmen jurisdictions and responsibilities between sectors.
What does this mean for the users of ADR and the acceptance thereof? Well, as
indicated above, although there is ample ADR provision available in the UK, it
remains a challenge for the consumer to find it. Throughout the UK, Citizens
Advice Bureaux20—a national charity—are the go-to point for ordinary people
to find advice and help with their problems. It is a free service that provides
confidential, independent and impartial advice to everyone about rights and
responsibilities. The charity has 21,600 highly trained volunteers supporting the
delivery of its work. Despite financial constraints and other challenges, Citizens
Advice Bureaux throughout the country remain the intuitive access point for
seeking advice and signposting to ADR providers. Here, more effort is needed
to work together to improve the systems of signposting and communication.
The British are no natural complainers. Although I am briefly diverging into
stereotypes, I believe it will assist the understanding of how national characteristics play a role in the use of dispute resolution systems. A common cliché about
Britishness is a tendency for people to moan (to friends and colleagues) but not
to actually do anything about the problem (by reporting it to those responsible). So, if confronted with faulty goods or services, for example, people are not
very likely to actively complain.21 Taking the motivation to moan to a new level
might extend to, for example, letters voicing an objection about a particular
issue sent to a newspaper and thereby shared with a wider audience. Of course,
the leap from moaning to complaining is a tough one (Fox 2014). However, in
connection to ADR, if people do access this service it can be perceived as giving
voice to their complaint, making a stand, and having someone do something
about it. This also enables the problem to be put right for future users.
The Justice System in Germany
In Germany, the court system is structured federally and its structure is divided
between ordinary jurisdiction and specialized courts. The ordinary jurisdiction consists of the civil and criminal jurisdictions. The specialized courts are
the administrative courts, the finance courts, the labour courts and the social
courts. In addition, there is the constitutional jurisdiction, which consists of
20www.citizensadvice.org.uk.
21www.complaintexpert.co.uk/nation-complains-in-private.html.
26   N. Creutzfeldt
the Federal Constitutional Court and the constitutional courts of the Länder.
Further, the German court system is divided into five independent specialized
branches of jurisdictions: ordinary jurisdiction, labour jurisdiction, general
administrative jurisdiction, fiscal jurisdiction and social jurisdiction.22
A small claims procedure for claims under €600 is available in Germany. The
court may, however, apply the ordinary procedure if the claim is too complex.
Before going to court, parties must attempt in-court mediation. No appeal is
possible, except in specific circumstances and 67.6% of the cases are dealt with
within three months.23 Consumer complaints are dealt with in an efficient way
through the court system. The use of ADR is not widespread but, interestingly
enough, in those sectors that have ADR bodies, they are mirroring the formal
system (Creutzfeldt 2016e). What do I mean by that? The ADR landscape in
Germany has developed slowly and was not particularly welcomed by the legal
profession. Many lawyers thought that mediation and ADR would take away
their business and allow ‘amateurs’ to take over. An observation about the ADR
bodies in Germany (ombudsmen as a typical model) is that retired judges head
them and employees are all trained lawyers. I will go into more detail about the
significance of these characteristics in Chapter 6.
Verbraucherzentralen (Consumer Advice Centres)
All of the 16 Länder have Verbraucherzentralen—in total there are about 200
in Germany. The Verbraucherzentralen of the Länder and the central office
combined have around 1000 employees. These facilities allow consumers to
access reliable, up-to-date information and independent advice. The consumer centres are independent, mostly publicly funded, non-profit organizations. The aim of their work is to inform, advise and support consumers in
private consumer matters. They offer help through disentangling the often
complex market conditions and the resulting consumer confusion and complaints. Public funding is available to these consumer centres and they also
generate some income through the sale of advice materials.
A Nation of Rules, Organization and Structure
Diverging briefly into stereotypes again. The Germans are said to have an
extreme complaint culture. This is a result of the abundance of rules and
laws that regulate many aspects of everyday life and the fact that people
22https://e-justice.europa.eu/content_judicial_systems_in_member_states-16-de-en.do?member=1.
23http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/solving_consumer_disputes/docs/ms_fiches_germany.pdf.
are used to obeying them. On the one hand, this leads to structure and efficiency and, on the other, to inflexibility. The love of rules manifests itself in
many ways. For example, there is a very clear and authoritative language surrounding order.24 In this culture there is little space for negotiating or allowing alternatives and a side effect of this is that consumers are not met with
helpful or friendly customer services. A lot of complaints are therefore easily
escalated to senior levels followed by legal action. One might argue that this
forms part of the truth-seeking German mentality, being honest and outspoken without a defined sense of diplomacy or sensitivity. The notion is
that complaining is often constructive, through seeking improvements, and
German complainers are clear about what is bothering them.
In this chapter, I have explored European justice systems as a collection of
national structures. A justice systems is understood here as the overarching
framework of which a legal system is a part with its formal and informal
pathways to redress. Our own national legal systems reflect how we behave
and how we (as a country) expect people, organizations and governments to
behave towards each other. Recent legislation on consumer ADR and ODR
has introduced an EU-wide change to the informal dispute resolution landscape. The extent to which the informal ADR system is integrated alongside
the formal legal system into the national justice system varies from country
My aim in this book is to gain a better understanding of what people
expect from their interactions with the informal ADR system when faced
with problems and complaints about institutions. These complaints can be
of civil and commercial nature (consumer to business) and of administrative
justice nature (citizen and state). In this chapter I have argued that, for the
legitimacy of the new legislative framework for ADR/ODR to be accepted,
it needs to be understood in a national context and through its relationship
with the formal legal system. The next chapter will discuss how ADR sits
in the national justice systems and illustrate the differences and similarities
between ombudsmen.
24I will return to this in Chapter 6 when disentangling the relationship people have with the justice
The tradition of settling disputes (Roberts and Palmer 2005) has its cultural
origins in various nations around the world and there is no clear evidence or
trace of where various models to resolve disputes originated. When discussing the ombudsman model of dispute resolution, the commonly portrayed
origin is the Swedish model. The Swedish Justitieombudsman, established in
1809 (Anderman 1962), spread throughout other Nordic countries, to New
Zealand in 1962, and then throughout the world (Reif 2004). The ombudsman institution filled a void in national legal systems offering a combination
of redress and justice where there was a lack of respect for human rights. The
ombudsman was imported to the national system to strengthen the existing legal order (Buck et al. 2011: 10). In other countries the ombudsman
formed part of the expansion of the administrative sector (Heede 2000).
The ombudsman model was initially introduced as an administrative oversight and has since developed and grown beyond these tasks. The ombudsman model, part of a system to resolve people’s complaints, is typically
located within the national (social and political) context. Generally speaking,
an ombudsman aims to restore public confidence in administration, in a sector, or in an individual institution or business. The ability of the ombudsman
to operate comfortably in a range of different legal regimes, and perform
the very different roles and functions that it has been used to deliver, is part
of the success of the institution (Heede 2000; Kucsko-Stadlmayer 2009).
A detailed historical overview of the ombudsman institution is provided
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78807-4_3
30   N. Creutzfeldt
Wby Reif (2004), setting out from its Swedish origins to its more modern incarnations, in the context of the human rights discourse. Seneviratne
(2002) provides an overview of the public services ombudsmen in the
administrative justice context and Buck et al. (2011) offer an account of the
development of the ombudsman enterprise and administrative justice. I offer,
in what follows, a brief overview of ombudsmen in the public sector, private
sector and organizational ombudsmen (more detail Creutzfeldt 2018).
A rather confusing thing about ombudsmen is that there are different
types, providing different kinds of dispute resolution, yet they are all called
ombudsmen. A broad distinction is that of public and private. But, if we
were to question what exactly defines public and private (jurisdiction, funding, laws) we are likely to end up with a collection of hybrid structures with
fuzzy boundaries. The following briefly outlines the similarities and differences between different types of ombudsmen.
The public sector ombudsman is set up by law to receive and investigate
complaints from the public about state institutions. Some ombudsmen
come with powers to investigate, others don’t. A core role of a public sector
ombudsman is to identify systemic problems as well as to investigate complaints. Ombudsmen typically look at lack of fairness on part of government
administration (Reif 2004: 3). Ideally, they offer rapid and informal resolution to citizens’ complaints and are seen as complementary, or supplementary, to the national court system (Rowat 2007).
The development of private sector ADR and, within this, the development
of the ombudsman model, has become formalized in European legislation
through the consumer alternative dispute resolution (ADR) directive (see
Chapter 2) (Hodges et al. 2012). The ombudsman model is one of many
forms an ADR body can have. For example, there are forms of ADR in the
UK that are recognized by industries and run by the Institute of Dispute
Resolution Schemes (IDRS) and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators
(CIArb). Then there are certified ADR bodies that have to be recognized
as such by a competent authority. The competent authorities for regulated
industries are usually the regulator of that sector. The legislation leaves it up
to the member states to decide whether participation in ADR is mandatory
for business. However the regulations do require most businesses that sell
directly to consumers to signpost to a certified ADR body. A private sector ombudsman (or ADR provider) investigates consumers’ complaints and
aims to settle them.
The organizational ombudsman appeared spontaneously throughout
the twentieth century (Rowe and Gadlin 2014). In the 1960s the classical
ombudsman concept was adapted for organizations in many sectors. The
organizational ombudsman offers a chance for people to raise issues and
concerns in their lives as employees, managers, students, rather than as citizens. This model has evolved from the classic (public) ombudsman and can
also be seen as a spontaneous creation and re-invention of an internal neutral conflict resolver (usually senior managers).
For the purpose of a general understanding of the ombudsman model
I will discuss shared features and distinctive differences. The shared features
are that ombudsmen offer an informal pathway to help people and business/institutions solve their grievances with each other. Usually ombudsmen are committed to a set of values that guide their standards, conduct
and ethics. Compared to the formal system of dispute resolution (courts) the
ombudsman model promises procedures that are speedy, cost-effective, and
less formal. These promises are kept through a different process than that of
a formal court procedure. Contact with an ombudsman typically does not
take place face-to-face but over the phone, email or post. This is also how
the information is shared, electronically.
The differences between public and private sector ombudsmen lie
mainly in the type of problems they deal with. Public sector ombudsmen
help citizens resolve problems with public institutions and private sector
ombudsmen help consumers resolve problems with goods and services
purchased from a business. A distinction can be found in the funding and
the type of redress ombudsmen offer. Again, there are exceptions to the
rule, but generally speaking public ombudsmen are funded though the
public purse, whereas private ombudsmen are typically funded by their
members’ annual fees or sometimes through a combination of both.
For this study, clear distinctions are drawn between public ADR bodies
and private ADR bodies. Private sector ADR bodies are those that fall under
the consumer ADR directive and public sector ombudsmen are those set up
by the government to help citizens bring problems they have with providers
of public services (Table 3.1).
The consumer ADR directive creates challenges to ombudsmen in both
private and public sectors. O’Brien (2015) argues that, ‘in particular, those
ombudsmen who currently oversee public bodies […] face the risk of relinquishing their distinctive democratic remit to a form of consumerism that is
concerned exclusively with individual redress and market efficiency.’ Might
the ADR directive and its market driven outlook on consumerism influence
the development of the public sector ombudsmen? O’Brien (2015) fears
that the developments will distract from ombudsmen as ‘ … field-leaders in
32   N. Creutzfeldt
Table 3.1 Public and private ombudsmen in this study
Schlichtungsstelle für den
Table 3.2 Trust in justice
Trust in the legal
system [courts]
Trust in country’s
Trust in the police Trust in the EP
(Measured on a scale 1–10: 1 = no trust at all; 10 = complete trust)
the era of new governance and of the pragmatic turn in the construction of
legal liberalism.’ Maintaining a clear divide between public and private then,
the future of public sector ombudsmen is ‘a matter of democratic accountability rather than of consumer redress.’
I don’t share O’Brien’s fear; rather I believe that there is an opportunity for
the public sector ombudsmen to benefit from the current debate about quality of service and user satisfaction that is dominating the debate around the
private sector ombudsmen, and ADR as a whole (Creutzfeldt and Bradford
2018). Equally, the public sector ombudsmen can develop and foster their
role of holding government bodies to account as well as to engage with citizens’ expectations and grievances. I will return to this discussion in Chapter 8.
Harmonization vs Diversity of Setting
The aim of the European Union (EU) consumer ADR and online dispute
resolution (ODR) legislation is to provide a harmonized approach to consumer redress throughout the EU. As discussed in Chapter 2, EU member
states have different legal traditions, different legal systems and different
legal cultures. The consumer ADR directive offered member states a framework to adapt into their national specific contexts.
The ambitions of the EU are straightforward; this legislation was born out
of the need to encourage consumption in the single market and to set up
institutions that provide redress in case of problems. These institutions are
required to be cheap, accessible and fair and are intended to provide speedy
resolution (Creutzfeldt 2016b). Like most pieces of harmonized legislation,
having gone through a process of community scrutiny, the ADR directive
was a compromise. The legislation had to fit in with existing ADR bodies in
the member states and, on top of that, provide (minimum) guidelines and
quality criteria for the creation of new ones. Many commentators believe
that these guidelines are not strict enough and leave too much leeway in
the interpretation of the directive into national systems (Kirkham 2016;
Creutzfeldt and Berlin 2016; Gill et al. 2017).
Implementation into the national legal space continues to be challenging.
Every member state has its own traditions and legal systems that have contributed towards their approaches to disputes, attitudes to institutions and
that influence what citizens expect of those institutions. To be successfully
integrated into the national setting we need to consider more than just the
rules and anticipated institutional requirements of ombudsmen. Although
the consumer ADR directive covers disputes between consumers and businesses, it has forced member states to engage in a wider debate about the
provision of ADR in general. ADR cannot be seen as a standalone process, it needs to be viewed within the environment in which it is supposed
to function and must take into account the people it is designed to serve.
This includes the public sector ombudsmen as well. It is a system of informal justice that is closely intertwined with the formal justice system (see
The Development of the Ombudsman Model
Some noteworthy post-World War II political developments contributed
to the necessity of establishing an independent office that would be responsible for reinstating confidence on legal continuity, redress and justice, and
that would operate according to the principles of fairness and equity. This
resulted in a multitude of different ombudsmen, situated in different contexts. Therefore, ombudsmen need to be understood not only in the context
of the overall purpose they serve but also where they are situated within their
34   N. Creutzfeldt
national context.1 A common theme within the diversity of contexts into
which the ombudsmen has been transplanted is a response, reaction or soughtfor solution for filling an identified gap. This gap could be either a lack of public accountability and need for an intermediary between the citizen and the
state in the public sector; or the identified lack of access to justice for resolving
consumer complaints in the private sector, for example. Of course, the drivers for change that prompted the development and spread of the ombudsman
model have different backgrounds and with the proliferation of the model the
diversity of processes and decision-making also developed (Creutzfeldt 2018).
As mentioned, the ombudsman model I am concerned with was created in Sweden to give the people a voice to place complaints against the
monarch (Creutzfeldt 2018). It developed into a model to improve citizens’
rights and their ability to enforce accountability in the political and administrative process. The Swedish ombudsman model grew and expanded over the
centuries within the context of the national legal culture (Reif 2013). This,
arguably, produced a national socialization and acceptance of this model.
From there it travelled to other places. But what does this transplantation
mean for the acceptance of a new model into a system that has no concrete
experience of or socialization towards ombudsmen or ADR?
Relocated into new settings the ombudsman model requires a flexible
approach to the context in which it will resolve disputes. This shift and
development of the model has happened alongside the changing relationship
between the individual and the state. The relationships are constantly redefined as part of our interactions with public service providers or businesses
from which we purchase goods and services. These everyday encounters are
subject to two overarching relationships, that between the citizen and the
state and that between the consumer and the business. These are subject to
constant negotiation, based on people’s overarching attitudes to, and expectations of, authorities.
These two sets of pertinent relationships—citizen/state and consumer/
business—have, of course, many interwoven dimensions and are informed
by different channels. The relationship between the citizen and the state is
informed through a combination of long and short-term political changes,
socio-economic developments and our immediate personal surroundings,
to name a few. From this vast mix of information and realities that we
are faced with, fuelled constantly by the media and the internet, we have
to choose a version or position from which to negotiate our environment.
1This,
I suggest, has an effect on their acceptance by their users (Creutzfeldt 2016d).
Our opinions are shaped and reshaped by the manner in which we collect
information about daily encounters with the state, the legal system and its
institutions of authority. I suggest that the way in which we learn to accept,
criticize and question these official institutions—either through direct interaction or through other channels—governs our assumptions and expectations of our relationships with other institutions in a system. Put differently,
we will use what we believe to be true about authority as a blueprint to
shape our attitudes towards another form of authority in the justice system.
The relationship between the consumer and a business is constantly being
modified and renegotiated. There are many reasons for this, for example, the
opening of the marketplace to competition, or the opportunity to compare
goods and services online and purchase across national borders. As consumers today, we have a choice to actively engage with the business we purchase
a good or service from. We can compare offers, change suppliers and complain when things go wrong. Consumers’ demands for fair treatment, being
more aware of their rights, and the availability of digital technology have all
contributed to generating an informed and educated consumer.2 Consumers
demand better services and this includes a well-functioning dispute resolution provision.
The way in which citizens relate to institutions providing public services
(Creutzfeldt 2016d) and the way in which consumers relate to a business
will be at their most fragile when bringing a complaint. What both situations have in common is that the individual is usually in the weaker position
in a dispute with a public body or a business. Here the ombudsman comes
into play. It operates at the intersection between the relationships and negotiates them. Based on our relationship with authority, we make sense of this
interaction. The authorities that shape our expectations are part of our legal
and political culture (Hertogh and Kurkchiyan 2016).
How then can we best understand the development of the ombudsman
model in its national setting? As the model was taken from its Swedish origins
into other cultural contexts, the literature on legal transplants and legal culture seems the most promising approach by which to understand this process.
In this chapter, I continue to build the argument that ombudsmen can
only be accepted and trusted as part of a justice system when understood
in their national context. To grasp the tension between informal flexibility
2The Guardian ‘The relationship between consumers and business is changing from the bottom up’ 26
January 2012: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/davos-consumer-business-relationship.
36   N. Creutzfeldt
and context, the first part lays the foundations for this discussion, drawing
upon the literature on legal transplants and legal culture. In this setting, the
ombudsman—as an ADR model prescribed by European legislators to be
made available—is evaluated as a legal transplant, operating in a specific
legal culture. The overarching question here is whether the ombudsman
model is replicable in every local cultural context. To explore this idea, the
second part of the chapter goes on to apply these concepts of transplants and
legal culture as a window onto the case studies.
Transplanting the Ombudsman Model
into the National Legal Space
Comparative law scholars have described legal transplants as either a theory
of legal change, or as a shared technique used by political agents to borrow
rules, institutions, or principles from other places. This makes a transplant
more of a technique, rather than generating legal change. Watson (1974:
21), coining the term, described legal transplants as ‘the moving of a rule or
a system of law from one country to another or from one people to another’.
According to Watson’s theory, a legal rule is transplanted simply because it is
a good idea. He further states that ‘transplanting is, in fact, the most fertile
source of development. Most changes in most systems are the result of borrowing’ (Watson 1993: 93).
In a critique of Watson’s (1993) claim that the transplantation of legal
rules ‘travel[s] across jurisdictions, which are displaced, which are transplanted’, Legrand (1997) argues that interactions across legal systems need to
be understood in their complex set of historical, epistemological, or cultural
contexts that shape a law and rules. Because rules are not socially connected
in any meaningful way, differences in ‘historical factors and habits though
do not limit or qualify their transplantablility’ (p. 113). Legrand (1997)
disagrees with Watson’s understanding of rules and argues that rules cannot
travel and therefore legal transplants are impossible (1993: 114). Carrying
the argument for an inclusion of surrounding factors of a potential transplant (Mauss 1995: 274–275) argues that ‘every manifestation of the law – a
rule, for instance – must be apprehended a complete social fact’. Building on
the notion that law cannot be understood in isolation from its surroundings
(Roscoe 1938: 94) explores the idea that the ‘history of a system of law is
largely a history of borrowings of legal materials from other legal systems and
of assimilation of materials from outside of the law.’
The choice of interpretations of any given system of law and what are
the side-effects of its transplantation into another system could be assessed
from countless angles. Indeed, it is not possible to understand a transplanted institution or system in isolation, rather it needs to evolve into its
surroundings. Equally, the surroundings will have an influence on the transplant. Therefore, I have some sympathy with Legrand’s view that rules are
connected to a set of cultural meanings and understandings and that the
latter do not move with the rules. Rather rules, when travelling with the
legal transplant, are given new meanings according to their context. This,
I believe, is the strength of the ombudsman model—it is not a set rule or
law that is imposed into a new system, rather it is an idea or model that can
be adapted into new contexts and therefore, potentially, create its own culture and specific rules. I take the view that understanding the law can only
be achieved if the law is manifested and accepted through rules that cannot be disentangled from their cultural, historical and ideological constructions. It is also the case that context and local meaning matter. Therefore, I
argue that an ombudsman model understood not as an imposed or transplanted set of rules but rather as a flexible model that comes with a set of
tools designed to fit into an existing legal system has proven to be a successful approach. This model, if we stick with the notion of legal transplant,
could be understood as a borrowed model that has been introduced to
a new surrounding and has to evolve into becoming part of it. The question remains though of how the ombudsman model is accepted within its
new setting which, I believe, happens through the lens of people’s culturally
determined understandings of a legal system3 (Chapter 6). Consequently, in
the ombudsman context, it is not so much the question of whether a set of
rules can or cannot be transplanted from one culture to another, but rather
how this model can be adjusted to suit the system into which it has been
integrated. This means that any given national legal culture and legal system
into which the ombudsman has been introduced plays a part in how the
model is accepted by its users.
What then makes us accept an ombudsman? Part of the answer to this
question lies in the r