At a time when the collective redress landscape is undergoing a period of transformative change, this important and timely research focuses on class actions in England and Wales.
The author provides an objective analysis of the costs and benefits of these proceedings from an access to justice perspective.
Aiming to promote accessibility, this pioneering work separates fact from fiction in an easily digestible way, offering progressive solutions for reform.
The right to access justice Access to justice is a fundamental human right. Whilst there is no single definition, accessible justice typically refers to fair and widely understood laws, access to adequate legal supports and services, impartial and equitable justice system procedures and the right to recourse where these things are not experienced. A broader contemporary definition acknowledges ‘extra-legal’ factors, such as inequalities in health, housing and employment, which create and perpetaute barriers to justice. The notion of accessible justice
In England and Wales today, calls for increasing access to justice are omnipresent. Justice stakeholders have observed at length that the capacity of people to access justice is paramount in a democracy governed by the rule of law. The purview of the current access to justice agenda has thus been quite broad, covering everything from the rise in litigants-in-person – that is, individuals who are representing themselves as opposed to being represented by legal professionals – to the digital modernization of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service through the
Access to justice for all, regardless of the ability to pay, has been a core democratic value. But this basic human right has come under threat through wider processes of restructuring, with an increasingly market-led approach to the provision of welfare. Professionals and volunteers in Law Centres in Britain are struggling to provide legal advice and access to welfare rights to disadvantaged communities.
Drawing upon original research, this unique study explores how strategies to safeguard these vital services might be developed in ways that strengthen rather than undermine the basic ethics and principles of public service provision. The book explores how such strategies might strengthen the position of those who provide, as well as those who need, public services, and ways to empower communities to work more effectively with professionals and progressive organisations in the pursuit of rights and social justice agendas more widely.
19 TWO concepts of justice and access to justice Before focusing upon the development of legal aid and the history of Law Centres, more specifically, this chapter starts by summarising different definitions and perspectives on social justice and their varying implications for social welfare. Among others, Piachaud has pointed to ‘the very ambiguity of the term “social justice” – a “feel good” term that almost all can subscribe to’ (Piachaud, 2008, p 33). While the pursuit of social justice ‘has been the driving force behind much, perhaps most, social
133 9 Marketisation and competition in criminal legal aid: implications for access to justice Tom Smith and Ed Johnston Introduction Legal aid, particularly in criminal justice, is a divisive subject. For its most devoted proponents, state funding of legal representation and advice for those accused of crime is a vital public good which helps to uphold values of fairness, justice and equality. For its most virulent critics, criminal legal aid is a wasteful, bloated relic from a bygone era of state intervention, serving primarily to help criminals escape
117 NINE Access to justice for disadvantaged communities: value and values Access to justice was central to the principles upon which the post-war welfare state was established, as Chapter One explained, demonstrating the importance of Law Centres’ contributions to the provision of access to justice for all, regardless of the ability to pay. How, then, were public service modernisation agendas being experienced in this vitally important but relatively under-researched field? And what might be the wider implications for social justice agendas more generally
problems created by IM cards often caused people to be unable to acquire goods and services when these were needed, and rendered IM cardholders in Australia unable to pay a range of bills. As will be discussed in this chapter, this undermined long-valued consumer rights and contractual freedoms. This chapter also examines procedural rights for cardholders to exit or make complaints about IM schemes, and how these processes are experienced by those who have to use them. This study shows that IM exit and exemption processes raise significant access to justice issues. For
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Exploring how justice is delivered at a time of rapid technological transformation, Justice in the Digital State exposes urgent issues surrounding the modernisation of courts and tribunals whilst examining the effects of technology on established systems. Case studies investigate the rise of crowdfunded judicial reviews, the digitalisation of tribunals and the rise of ‘agile’ methodologies in building administrative justice systems. Joe Tomlinson’s cutting-edge research offers an authoritative and much-needed guide for navigating through the challenges of digital disruption.
