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Seminar Programme – Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Justice (DIJUS) Domingos Soares Frinho – Director of the Alternative Litigation Resolution Department Daniel Andrade – Lawyer Isabel Afonso – Director of the Centre for Consumer Information and Arbitration of Porto Moderation – João Pedroso (CES) Commentary – Sara Araújo (CES) At the moment judicial courts face serious difficulties, incapable of facing alone the task of administrating justice, the debate concerning forms of extrajudicial justice is pertinent. If instances of conflict resolution of non judicial nature have always existed, with very diversified social and political significances and forms, today they tend to be recognized and incentivized. This DIJUS seminar aims to discuss the role of the instances that have come to assume such differentiated designations as «informal justice», «proximity justice», «popular justice» or «alternative means for litigation resolution» while promoting citizens’ access to justice. The idea underlining these different concepts and the diverse forms of justice to which they report is that justice is centralized in the State, bureaucratic, hierarchical, professionalized and based on state law isn’t a unique and universal model. The intention is, therefore, through theoretical reflection, scientific research and concrete experience of the professionals, to reflect on these and other models of conflict resolution, assessing if they tend to provide an effectively more immediate, more democratic, promoter of citizenship or, on the contrary, a poor quality justice, reproducing social inequalities. This seminar programme deals with relations of (in)comprehension between the judicial discourse and the discourse(s) of other sciences. Through the recording of these dialogues the intention is, at the end of the Project, through content analysis, to analyze the convergences and divergences of knowledge, discourse and the manner in which these are “translated” and used in the occultation/disclosure of facts and in the construction of a truth that may be apprehended and recognized by the judicial system. This Research Project/Seminar Programme will comprise, in a first moment, twelve seminars, to be carried out until the end of 2009, with the participation of professionals and researchers from several knowledge and disciplines related to justice administration, from medicine to management sciences, and from psychiatry to psychology to social service. |