Barangay Justice System

Katarungang Pambarangay, or the Barangay Justice System is a local justice system in the Philippines. It is operated by the smallest of the local government units, the barangay, and is overseen by the barangay captain, the highest elected official of the barangay and its executive. The barangay captain sits on the Lupon Tagapamayapa along with other barangay residents, which is the committee that decides disputes and other matters. They do not constitute a court as they do not have judicial powers.

The system exists to help decongest the regular courts and works mostly as "alternative, community-based mechanism for dispute resolution of conflicts," also described as a "compulsory mediation process at the village level."

Throughout the Philippines the Barangay Justice Systems handles thousands of cases a year. Since officials have more flexibility in decision-making, including from complex evidence rules, and receive some resources from government, the courts are more numerous and accessible than other courts and therefore the courts are able to hear more cases and to respond more immediately.

The Katarungang Pambarangay share characteristics with similar traditional, hybrid courts in other countries such as the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Nigeria and South Africa, among others. Such courts emerged during colonial periods as Western imperial powers introduced western legal systems. The Western legal systems were usually applied to westerners while the local dispute resolution systems were integrated into the Western system in a variety of ways including incorporation of local decision makers into the government in some way. After independence, many states faced the same problems as their former rulers, especially "limited geographical reach of state institutions, Western-modeled institutions often divorced from community structures and expectations, and resource constraints in the justice sector." Hybrid courts became a "middle ground for supporting community decision-making while simultaneously expanding the authority and reach of the state."

Besides "hybrid courts", other authors have described the system as a "Non-State Justice System".

There has long been a traditional, local system of resolving disputes. Presidential Decree 1508 talks an unofficial "time-honored tradition of amicably settling disputes among family and barangay members at the barangay level without judicial resources".

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