ENGLISH COMPUTING LAW

English Computing Law

English Computing Law

Since the 1960s, reformers have called for changes in national legal systems to enhance "access to justice" for disadvantaged groups and citizens at large. The concept arose in an era of the welfare state and growing rights consciousness, and was usually identified with committing the state to increasing social services and widening opportunities for dispute resolution. But in the 1980s and 1990s, the rise of neo-liberal politics stimulated cuts in social spending and an emphasis on efficiency across many countries. These changes pitted traditional, rights-conscious concepts of access to justice against models that focused on the resource constraints forcing choices among social objectives. At the same time, at a conceptual level, traditional access to justice ideas were critiqued as being narrowly directed at procedural access rather than substantive justice. Today, the goal of access to justice is adopted across the political and ideological spectrum, from poverty advocates seeking expanded legal assistance to reformers concerned about the impact of costly procedures on citizens' ability to seek redress through the courts.

In an international study that popularized the idea of access to justice, Cappelletti and Garth in 2002 identified three waves of reform aimed at making the formal right to justice effective. The first wave consisted of efforts to make legal aid and advice more available to the poor; the second phase promoted representative actions and other procedures that would allow a single lawsuit to resolve a large number of claims; and the third wave addressed broad reform to the legal system, including alternative dispute resolution, small claims courts, and other procedural change (Cappelletti and Garth 2002). Access to justice remains identified with legal aid, representative actions, alternative dispute resolution, and other strategies of court reform.

The existing system of civil legal aid, which would be managed by the ...