Revista da EMERJ - V. 21 - N. 2 - Maio/Agosto - 2019

15  R. EMERJ, Rio de Janeiro, v. 21, n. 2, p. 11-39, Maio-Agosto, 2019  the efficient management of the mass of civil proceedings, i.e., the overall performance of the civil justice system, as they may well be users of that system in the future. 8 By exploring avenues for drafting a principle of efficiency in this field, take as a starting point a very simple definition of efficiency, drawn from economics and also acknowledged by legal scholarship. 9 It concerns the ratio of the work done by a system relative to the resources supplied to it. It is a purely formal definition, lacking any substantive content. What is the point or what is the aim to be pursued by an efficient allocation of resources in the field of civil justice? I suggest that this aim be identified with the purposes of the civil justice system as such. Therefore, a principle of efficiency in civil justice could be tentatively drafted as follows: “Access to the courts and effective protection of rights in a fair process should be provided by the law in an efficient way, allotting to each case an appropriate share of the court’s resources, while taking into account the need to allot resources to other cases”. It should be no secret that the second part of this formulation (“allotting…”) heavily draws upon Rule 1.1. (e) English and Welsh CPR. I had the opportunity to suggest a similar wording in the course of the preparatory work for a new code of civil procedure in Italy, drafted by Andrea Proto Pisani some years ago. 10 Under the heading “Efficiency of civil procedure”, the provision 0.8 of Proto Pisani’s draft reads in Italian as follows: “È assicurato un impiego proporzionato delle risorse giudiziali ris- petto allo scopo della giusta composizione della controversia entro un ter- mine ragionevole, tenendo conto della necessità di riservare risorse agli altri processi”. An alternative formulation (less elegant, but underlining the pri- macy of access to the court and effectiveness) could be: “The pursuit of efficiency shall not be detrimental to the right of access to courts and the effective protection of rights”. 8 For further remarks on this aspect and practical examples, s. R. Caponi , Il principio di proporzionalità nella giustizia civile: prime note sistematiche, Rivista trimestrale di diritto e procedura civile, 2010, p. 389ff. 9 W. Hoffmann-Riem, E. Schmidt-Aßmann , Effizienz als Herausforderung an das Verwaltungsrecht, Nomos, 1998, p. 246. 10 Cf. A. Proto Pisani , Per un nuovo codice di procedura civile, Foro it., 2009, V, c. 1 ff.