Droit et Société N° 20-21, 1992
Civil litigation in Belgium :
The reconstruction of the pyramid of légal disputes*
— a preliminary report —
Yolande WOUTERS and Francis VAN LOON**
SUMMARY
RÉSUMÉ
1. Introduction
The last décades, and, looking further back, the past 150 years, Belgian civil courts hâve experi- enced a considérable increase of disputes to pro- cess.
Questions about this rise in caseload hâve been asked.
Is society becoming overly litigious ? Who are
thèse people who seem to be so sensitive to small insults, and eager to convert them into expensive lawsuits ?
What is at stake ? Are there any patterns to be discovered in the dispute assessment and dispute handling ?
For several years, the Center for Sociology of Law of UFSIA has been studying civil litigation in Belgium1.
* Paper presented at the Onati conférence of the Research Committee for Sociology of Law, July 1990.
** Center for Sociology of Law, UFSIA, University of Antwerp.
1 A report on 150 years of civil litigation in Belgium is published : F. Van Loon, E. Langerwerf, "Socio-economic development and the évolution of litigation rates of civil courts in Belgium (1835-1984)", in Law and Society Re-
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