Henrik Bellander

Project summary

Procedural economy – a study of explicit and implicit economic arguments in procedural law

Arguments based on procedural economy play a central role in contemporary procedural law. They can be found in legislative materials, in the reasoning of courts and in legal scholarship. However, arguments concerning procedural economy are used in a wide variety of senses, which are often contradictory. Sometimes the term refers to the parties’ costs in individual proceedings, sometimes to reducing costs to society in the long term, and sometimes to the more efficient use of court resources in individual proceedings. Yet the underlying, and often conflicting, interests involved in arguments about procedural economy are rarely made explicit. Instead, ‘procedural economy’ is used as if its meaning were self-evident.

 

This study addresses this problem. It begins by examining the economic interests and consequences that are relevant to important issues of procedural law but are referred to only indirectly, if at all. It also considers whether it would be possible, and if so preferable, to address these economic consequences explicitly instead. In addition, the study examines how different authors have used and modified arguments based on procedural economy over time, helping to explain why such arguments take the form they do today.