People-Centered Justice Has Become the Norm in Access to Justice
Ab Currie, Ph.D.Wednesday, December 18, 2024
*This blog was originally published on Slaw.ca on December 6, 2024*
People-centered approaches have quickly become the norm in access to justice. By the term norm I mean essentially the same thing as the use of the term in sociology, a widely accepted expectation or rule of behaviour – a way of doing things. People-centricity has escaped the fate of becoming either a mot du jour or a term widely accepted but deemed nothing new, greeted with the assertion; We have always done that. We just didn’t have a name for it. This escape from the ordinary lies in its roots in the legal needs literature and in a fortuitous turn of events in the promotion of global development by the United Nations.
The roots of people-centered justice lies in the seminal Paths to Justice study by Hazel Genn. During the civil justice reform movement that dominated much of the discourse in the 1900’s, Professor Genn observed that the predominant narrative of civil justice reform was focused entirely on problems in the courts – overcrowding, delay, access and so on. Justice system leaders were talking about civil justice reform without having much knowledge at all about the civil justice problems faced by the public, a serious flaw in the civil justice reform narrative. Of course, one cannot go to the formal justice system to find out about the problems faced by a public that has little access to it. Thus from there, the approach of using representative surveys of self-reported justiciable or everyday legal problems took hold. Genn’s definition of a justiciable event was a problem with legal aspects whether or not the individual was aware of the legal aspects or used any part of the formal justice system to resolve it. [1]In her seminal study and in the body of research that grew from it, now numbering over 75 major national or regional surveys, people were asked about problems they experienced, how they tried to deal with them, the obstacles they encountered and the consequences they experienced. This approach looked at problems from the point of view of the people experiencing them and not from the perspective of the justice system.
This was the foundation of a body of research with remarkably consistent results with which most people with a knowledge of access to justice are now familiar. Experiencing legal problems is ubiquitous in law thick societies in which law touches many of the normal transactions and transitions of everyday life. This amounts to between one third and one half, sometimes more, of the adult populations in most countries where legal needs surveys have been carried out reporting experiences of legal problems. Although almost everybody experiencing legal problems takes some action to resolve them, only about 5% resolves the matter through the formal justice system. About one third obtain some form of legal advice or information. A large percentage of people do not seek authoritative assistance. Many people experience serious consequences as a result of not resolving the problems or not resolving them in a favourable way. The justice gap between problems experienced and effective assistance is therefore large and it may be growing.
The knowledge that emerged from the contemporary body of legal needs research revolutionized the way in which we think about the nature of legal problems, about justice, and access to justice. The results of this body of legal needs research attracted much attention among socio-legal researchers and scholars. It affected access to justice policy in some countries, notably the United Kingdom and federal access to justice policy by the Government of Australia. Where resources and mandates allowed, the results of the early legal needs research were embraced by legal aid, especially community legal clinics in Ontario that already had deep roots in the communities they served. However, to borrow from the novelist and futurist William Gibson, the future has already arrived, it is just not evenly distributed. This is no doubt a perennial state of affairs in quickly changing areas such as access to justice.
Then in 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) exploded onto the world of access to justice, in particular SDG 16, with the objectives of promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, providing access to justice for all, and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. It was around that time the term people-centered justice entered the access to justice discourse. Early and influential publications such as Justice for All by the Pathfinders for Peaceful and Just Societies drew heavily on the results of legal needs research, creating the continuity between the everyday problems approach and people-centered access to justice.[2] People-centered justice became a companion concept and counterweight to the rule of law narrative that had been the dominant, if not the sole narrative, underpinning access to justice up to that point.[3] In spirit and practice, the rule of law narrative tended toward the formal justice system. People-centered justice introduced the normative element of “putting people first” into the formal justice system that, perhaps in spite of the intentions of legal professionals involved, could not be characterized as people-friendly. It encouraged new ways of resolving the problems that were alternatives for the people using the formal justice system to resolve legal problems, and the immensely larger numbers within the public needing people-friendly and accessible ways to resolve everyday legal problems outside the overburdened formal justice system.
Following the introduction of SDG 16, several major international organizations with global reach and significant resources became active in promoting access to justice. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is the most prominent among them, having taken a leadership role in promoting people-centered access to justice.[4] This began in 2015 with the OECD holding technical workshops and continued with a series of Access to Justice Global Roundtables at which senior representatives from many countries and leaders of major civil society organizations discuss developments in people-centered justice in their respective countries. Organizations with longer histories such as the International Legal Aid Group, continue to promote socio-legal research and scholarship in access to justice. Here in Canada, people-centred justice – building on early roots in the community clinic system – has equally taken off, as can be seen by its embrace within major justice organizations such as the Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters’ Roadmap for Change report.[5]
It is not a matter of great concern that people-centered justice bears similarities to concepts such as participatory justice, holistic service, or therapeutic justice. Regardless of the similarities among those concepts, people-centered justice has so far had a uniquely influential impact. It is one of the strengths of people-centered justice that it shares some elements of other concepts that have had positive effects on access to justice. An important feature of people-centered justice is the history and momentum that makes it distinct from similar ideas. The shift from the distinct justice system orientation of the early discussions of civil justice reform led to the development of legal needs research focusing on legal problems from the point of view of the people experiencing them rather than from the perspective of the justice system. That laid the foundation for a paradigm shift that changed the way we look at the nature of legal problems, at justice and access to justice. Sustainable Development Goal 16 gave access to justice a momentum it had not had before. People-centered access to justice, putting people first in the resolution of problems of justice and fairness became a companion concept to the traditional rule of law narrative that had been dominant in socio-legal thinking. People-centricity is now a normative feature of access to justice, widely accepted in socio-legal scholarship and in access to justice policy world-wide. People-centricity has become a normative concept in access to justice. It is a way of doing things.
The influence of people-centered justice can be seen in many different bodies of work within access to justice. Notwithstanding this wide range of applications, people-centered justice is far more than a mile wide and an inch deep. It is not the range of applications that is important. It is the normative quality that influences so many aspects of access to justice.
Ab Currie, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow
Canadian Forum on Civil Justice
[1] Hazel Genn, Paths To Justice: what people do and think about going to law, Hart Publishing, 1999. P. 12
[2] Pathfinders for Peaceful Just and Inclusive Societies, Justice For All, (2019) New York, online at https://Pathfinders+for+Peace%2c+justice+for+all)
[3] Adrian Di Giovanni and Maaike de Langen, People-Centered Justice in International Assistance, Rule of Law Path Dependencies or New Paths to Justice for All, Canadian Journal of Law and Society, forthcoming 2025
[4] OECD(2021), OECD Framework and Good Practice Principles for People-Centered Justice, OECD Publishing, Paris, online at https:doi.org/10.1787/cdc3bde7-en) and OECD, Recommendation of the Council on Access to Justice and People-Centered Systems, OECD/LEGAL/0498
[5] Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters, Access to Civil & Family Justice, A Roadmap for Change (Ottawa: Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters, October 2013), online: https://www.justicedevelopmentgoals.ca/resources