Digital Justice: Engineering Disadvantage?
Linda Mulcahy, the Director of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies and Anna Tsalapatanis, a former postdoctoral fellow at the Centre have just had their book Digital Justice: Engineering Disadvantage? published in the Palgrave Macmillan socio-legal series.
The book draws on many years of research on access to justice including an ESRC grant awarded by the authors which allowed them to conduct research into online justice and other work they have undertaken on Designing for Inclusion.
Digital Justice: Engineering Disadvantage presents an overview of recent shifts towards the digitalization of the legal system before considering what is gained and lost when justice goes online. Focusing on the needs of disadvantaged and marginalized users of the legal system, it concludes with a consideration of the ways in which the mindset of current architects of online justice systems and content providers fails to address the needs and opinions of public users of a public justice system in the design, testing and implementation of online services. Drawing on concepts of participatory design the authors outline the various ways in which the creation of new knowledge through radical listening can promote more democratic and responsible design.