The demand for civil justice in Germany: an empirical investigation

The demand for civil justice in Germany has shrunk over the last decades, although we can observe a high level of heterogeneity, with increasing and decreasing trends depending on specific case matters. The present work investigates this phenomenon, analyzing the aggregate demand for civil justice between 2008 and 2017 at the regional level, and focusing on the courts. We study the propensity of individuals to pursue justice according to the current economic, judicial and socio-cultural environments. We identify a statistically significant negative relation between economic development and the aggregate demand for civil justice, i.e., we cannot reject the hypothesis that the so-called ‘forgiving’ behavior might be predominant among the explored dynamics. However, considering the judicial environment, it emerges that judicial performance might discourage people from submitting cases to courts, lending strength to a different hypothesis, i.e., an increase in the use of alternative methods of dispute resolution on the private market of legal services. Finally, looking at socio-cultural dynamics, the authors observe statistically significant differences between the demand for justice in the West and the East of Germany.