Transparency

Abstract

Two related and often heartfelt objections to online courts should be disentangled. Both focus on the absence of a physical courtroom. One is that online courts are insufficiently transparent and so an affront to open justice. The other doubts whether it is possible to have a fair trial if the participants do not congregate physically—the worry here is that online courts might deliver decisions that are unfair (a concern about substantive justice) and that the procedures themselves are not fair (which contravenes procedural justice). In this chapter, I address the question of transparency and, in the next, I discuss the fairness of trials that are conducted online.