Sculpturing Adjudication as a Public Good: Competition between Jurisdictions as a Modeling Factor

Abstract

Court adjudication is considered as a public good and therefore as being non-rivalrous and non-excludable. These characteristic shapes the behavior of natural and legal persons and the governments' stance towards adjudication. In case public goods' characteristics are inherent to adjudication, i.e. attributes which adjudication has without outside interferences, any attempt to treat adjudication as a private good may create legal uncertainty and political instability. In practice, non-rivalrous and non-excludable are not inherent characteristics of adjudication, but consequences of governments' stance towards “public goods”. Therefore, whether or not adjudication is a public good dependents on the government's stance. This paper argues that the competition of civil justice systems can influence governments' stance and therefore change the nature of adjudication.

Keywords: competition of jurisdictions, court as a good, EU, dispute resolution, court adjudication, public goods, competition of civil justice systems, adjudication systems