Trials have finally gone online.
Judicial systems, including civil litigation, civil enforcement, and insolvency proceedings, have been established as part of the judicial services that the state provides to its citizens. While these serve as mechanisms for national governance, they are important tools for protecting citizens’ rights; therefore, the systems need to be accessible to the people before anything else.
In other words, without a court system, society could become a survival-of-the-fittest world. The state has established a court system to prevent such a situation. However, the system will be meaningless if it is too difficult to use because of complicated procedures or unnecessary delays. Consequently, improvements have been made to the system to make it more user-friendly through amendments to laws and changes in interpretation.
One of them is the discussion on judiciary digitalization. Regarding the digitalization of civil procedures in Japan, the Justice System Reform Council’s 2001 report recommended introducing information technology (IT) into litigation proceedings, and the 2004 revision of the Code of Civil Procedure established provisions allowing online filing with the courts.
However, owing to the conservative nature of the legal world and resistance to digitalization, full-scale development did not progress quickly. Lagging the rest of the world, it was only in the late 2010s that the Japanese government as a whole began to move toward digitalization in earnest.
In 2018, the Cabinet Secretariat issued a report titled “Advancing Information Technology in the Courts: The Three e’s,” which set the direction for reform in Japan. This was built on three pillars: e-filing (online submission of claims and evidence), e-case management (online access to case records), and e-court (introduction and expansion of web conferencing).
Furthermore, as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, preparatory proceedings for litigation using web conferencing systems have been exceptionally allowed in the courts since 2019. In 2020, the Legislative Council began working on specific legal revision, and in 2022, the Diet revised the Code of Civil Procedure. This legislation to digitize procedures also covers other areas of civil procedures, such as personal status litigation, domestic-relations cases, civil enforcement, and insolvency proceedings.
In this way, the legal framework providing the basis for the digitization of civil procedures has been established, and the government is now working on the process of actual implementation and completion.
Essentially, the digitization of litigation proceedings refers to the process of digitizing documents to be submitted to the court via the internet, as well as expanding the types of proceedings in which you can participate using web conferencing without physically appearing at the court.
In fact, progress has been made in the development of digital devices and the introduction of online systems at district courts and their branches nationwide. Since March 2024, conducting online oral arguments has also become possible in civil litigation.
However, the full implementation of the revised law has yet to be achieved, including online examination of evidence and the digitization of case records and management, and they remain challenges.
Will satisfaction decrease with digitalized trials?
The biggest challenge in digitization lies in the possibility that, when oral arguments and preparatory proceedings are conducted online, the quality of information transmission may be lower compared to face-to-face communication.
For example, subtle facial expressions and gestures that are visible in person may become unclear in an online meeting, and it is also possible that a third party is giving instructions off-screen. Such quality issues are serious concerns that affect the fairness of trials.
In addition, there are security issues in online settings. For instance, when exchanging documents online, you must take the risk of computer viruses into account.
In fact, in Germany in October 2019, the servers at the Berlin High Court went down, causing electronic legal communications to be unavailable for several months. This incident is believed to have been caused by a virus designed for economic espionage, which infected the servers via a flash drive. Establishing security at each court is an urgent and critical issue.
Moreover, digitalization will not only change legal provisions but also have effects that go beyond the use of internet technology for communication. This may serve as an opportunity to reconsider the fundamental theories and practices of civil procedures.
This is because, in civil procedures until now, the concepts of procedures and theories for operating procedures were constructed on the premise that they would be conducted face-to-face and with written documents.
For example, in court proceedings, there is a principle known as the “orality principle,” under which spoken statements, rather than written ones, are regarded as the official case documents. This stems from the tradition of trials in times when the literacy rate was low, and oral statements are still valued in the courts today.
However, as judicial digitalization progresses, how much significance is there in reading aloud documents that have been electronically submitted and accepted during an online meeting? Perhaps we should take this opportunity to reconsider the raison d’être of the orality principle.
In self-represented litigation, where the party proceeds without a legal representative, the experience of having the judge listen carefully is an important factor contributing to satisfaction with the trial. This could be a reason to accept the verdict even if they lose the case.
Conversely, even if you obtain a favorable court decision, if the judge or the adverse party in the litigation does not fully engage with you, you may still feel dissatisfied. While digitization improves efficiency, this consideration of the emotional side of the parties should also be emphasized as part of the trial.
Operation for users not for the courts
On top of this, if the digitization of court records progresses, it will be necessary to review the access system. In accordance with the principle of public disclosure, court documents for civil cases can be inspected on application at the court. Under the current system, however, the access procedures are complicated and require a visit to the court in person, which poses a problem.
If digitization enables remote access, it will also improve the transparency of trials. However, since such documents contain many entries concerning personal information and privacy, the balance between revising the scope of disclosure and imposing access restrictions will be called into question.
Meanwhile, the use of AI in trials has also been attracting attention in recent years. In the United States, the use of AI for tasks such as researching court precedents and organizing court records is advancing, and legal tech companies specializing in AI have also emerged.
In addition, discussions have begun about whether AI can be used to make judicial decisions themselves. Although AI has the advantage of making decisions without being emotional, there is considerable psychological resistance among people to being judged by AI. Such a fusion of new technology and humanity will be a major focus in the future.
Another unavoidable issue in the digitalization of litigation proceedings is the digital divide. There are still elderly people and others who are not familiar with using the internet. In order to ensure that everyone can equally access the court system, it is essential to establish a system to support such people. In other words, while promoting online procedures, flexible system design is required, including allowing conventional paper-based and face-to-face procedures as options.
In any case, the important point is that digitalization should not be for the courts and lawyers alone. The digitization of litigation proceedings should be a means to make the justice system more user-friendly and accessible to the public. If the system is changed solely for the convenience of the courts, users’ convenience will be sacrificed, and the original purpose may be lost.
It goes without saying that digitization will not change the sense of justice, which is required in litigation proceedings. That said, the systems and theories for achieving such justice need to continue evolving with the times. To what extent and what kinds of systems can be allowed to achieve justice under law? Can the theories explaining it remain unchanged? It is fair to say that a new frontier of research is now emerging.
Having studied civil procedure laws, a field that has been considered complete in a sense, I find it significant that the major wave of digitalization has provided a different perspective.
Perhaps we will have to abandon everything we have studied and start from scratch. Nevertheless, I believe that being able to work on such a rewarding subject is truly a blessing for researchers.
* The information contained herein is current as of March 2025.
* The contents of articles on Meiji.net are based on the personal ideas and opinions of the author and do not indicate the official opinion of Meiji University.
* I work to achieve SDGs related to the educational and research themes that I am currently engaged in.
Information noted in the articles and videos, such as positions and affiliations, are current at the time of production.