Comprehensive Law
From Ethical Politics
Comprehensive law, coined by law professor Susan Daicoff of Florida Coastal School of Law, is a movement that "utilizes the insights of procedural justice and other social science-based understanding of the intrapersonal and interpersonal dynamics of legal affairs and legal disputes. Problem solving courts, which include drug treatment courts, unified family courts, and mental health courts, are examples of the comprehensive law movement in application."
There are various vectors or related approaches and developments in the law that make up the comprehensive law movement:
- collaborative law
- contemplative law
- holistic justice
- problem solving
- restorative justice
- therapeutic jurisprudence
- preventive law
- transformative mediation
Daicoff explains that comprehensive law and its vectors "intersect in two broad areas: first, it explicitly seeks to optimize human well-being in the administration of law, the resolution of legal disputes, and the resolution of legal matters, when to do so does not impinge or reduce the legal rights of the individuals involved. Second, in resolving legal matters, it explicitly considers more than strict legal rights, duties, and obligations; it includes needs, goals, values, beliefs, resources, relationships, psychological dynamics, and other nonlegal factors in its analysis of legal problems and legal solutions."
Comprehensive law provides an alternative to contemporary lawyering, aiming to improve the legal system from both the perspectives of lawyer and client.
Sources
- Daicoff, Susan, Law as a Healing Profession: The Comprehensive Law Movement. Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal, Fall 2005; NYLS Clinical Research Institute Paper No. 05/06-12.
Additional resources:
- Cutting Edge Law on Susan Daicoff
- Transformational Law: New Approaches Expand Choices in Law Practice by J. Kim Wright, Dolly M. Garlo and Marty Price
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Author: J Kim Wright
