- For a long time, civil justice was considered to be a purely national, conservative, and slow-changing topic. The texts collected in this book supply proof that this is no longer the case. These papers discuss civil justice from a European angle, concentrating on the age-old dichotomy between quality and efficiency. One of the developments that has triggered civil justice to become an international discipline is the establishment of the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice - better known by the acronym of its French name, the CEPEJ - on September 18, 2002 by the Council of Europe. The mandate of the CEPEJ is to analyze the results of the various judicial systems of the Member States of the Council of Europe, to identify the difficulties these systems encounter, to develop concrete ways to improve them, and to evaluate the functioning of these systems. Various papers in this volume address the CEPEJ and its work, as well as other issues of civil procedure in Europe, such as legal aid, alternative dispute resolution, and the influence of European developments on the reform of national civil justice systems. Consequently, the book provides an overview of the most recent ideas and developments in the field of civil justice. These ideas and developments show that although the values of the old tradition of European ius commune are still alive, they have been modified and expanded to such an extent that the organization of efficient civil justice systems has become a feasible option for national legislatures.