Ombudsmen and ADR

Naomi Creutzfeldt is Senior Lecturer in the Law Department at the Univeristy of Westminster, UK. Before then, she worked at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies (University of Oxford) for six years. She is currently focusing on my ESRC FRL project ‘trusting the middle-man: impact and legitimacy of ombudsmen’, which she will conclude in September 2016. Her research activities take her across Europe, engaging with ombudsmen, talking at academic conferences and planning knowledge-exchange workshops. Her interests in ombudsmen, as pathways of informal dispute resolution, have a broader scope, addressing questions of access to justice and consumer protection.  Concurrent with my work with the ombudsman community, she has just completed two explorative projects that look at consumers’ use of the Internet to achieve their goals: One project concerns citizens’ online activism (the use of the internet and social media to complain) in collaboration with Chris Gill form Queen Margaret University Edinburgh; the other concerns consumer projection in emerging economies. She is a member of the Law and Society Association (USA), the Socio-Legal Studies Association (UK) and an individual associate member of the Ombudsman Association. She is also a member of the executive committee of the SLSA, and a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford.

“For someone who works as a pracademic, and so benefits from understanding both the practice and theory of ombuds work, this book is a welcome addition to the literature. … packs a vast amount of information, opinion and comment into its 192 pages. … this book will be of interest to researchers, students and practitioners who work for or have an interest in ombuds.” (Carolyn Hirst, Ombuds Research, ombudsresearch.org.uk, July, 2018)“With this publication, Naomi Creutzfeldt brings new socio-legal insights to bear on ADR scholarship, and in particular on our understanding of the limits, and potential, of the ombud institution. … This formidable study stands, therefore, as a powerful illustration of the interdisciplinary approaches and methodological pluralism the author herself advocates if we are to identify more trustworthy forms of ADR, and, despite national differences, a genuinely transnational ‘ADR space’.” (Nick O’Brien, ukaji.org, July, 2018)

• PART ONE: SETTING THE SCENE.- Chapter 1. Ombudsmen and informal justice.- Chapter 2. Europe’s Informal justice systems.- Chapter 3. Models of ombudsmen.- Chapter 4. Procedural justice and legal consciousness: questions of theory and practise.- PART TWO: EMPIRICAL DISCOVERIES.- Chapter 5. Expectations and perceptions of Ombudsmen in cross-national comparison.- Chapter 6. Everyday assumptions about ombudsmen.- PART THREE: THE FUTURE OF INFORMAL JUSTICE SYSTEMS.- Chapter 7. A European informal justice system?.- Chapter 8. Growing informal justice (from the inside-out).- Chapter 9. Paths for theory and research.