Coming to Terms with Complexity Overload in Transborder e-Justice: The e-CODEX Platform

What does the making of a trans-national information infrastructure in the Justice domain entail? How is it designed? How is it implemented? The analysis of the e-CODEX, a large-scale pilot project to improve cross-border legal communication in the EU, sheds some light upon these questions. The purpose of e-CODEX is not just creating a technical system supporting transborder data exchange, but developing a functioning infrastructure that supports a legally valid, electronically mediated judicial communication system that can produce legal effects across different EU national jurisdictions. The e-CODEX case provides a flavour of the complexity entailed by such endeavour. It illustrates the clash between the attempt to organize and assemble the technological components on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the attempt to cope with the unexpected events and drifts that occur as the project progresses. It shows how the multi-layered legal and organizational dimensions (at the national and European level) become ever more relevant, and how cultivation strategies must be enacted to successfully implement the platform.