Justice foundations for the Comprehensive Law Movement

Area of Science:

• Legal Studies
• Philosophy of Law

Background:

• The Comprehensive Law Movement identifies nine dispute resolution alternatives to the traditional adversarial system.
• Existing analyses of these alternatives are fragmented, either focusing internally or externally to law.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a higher-order framework for evaluating dispute resolution alternatives.
• To clarify the relationships between the adversarial system and emerging legal "vectors".

Main Methods:

• Proposes an Aristotelian natural law virtue theory of justice as a super-system of norms.
• Utilizes this theory to provide a functional definition of justice and an evaluative foundation.

Main Results:

• The Aristotelian framework offers a comprehensive and internally consistent evaluative system.
• This approach clarifies the distinctions and commonalities among dispute resolution alternatives.

Conclusions:

• The Comprehensive Law Movement is better conceptualized as a Comprehensive Justice Movement.
• An Aristotelian natural law virtue theory provides the necessary theoretical foundation for understanding these developments.