The Global Access to Justice Project
Ab Currie, Ph.D.Friday, October 25, 2019
The Global Access to Justice Project has formed the largest network of academics and researchers ever assembled in the field of access to justice to map the progress that has been made globally in access to justice since the 1970’s. That was when two landmark studies were carried out to examine the rapid spread of legal aid in North America, Western European and some Commonwealth countries up to the 1960’s and early 1970’s. An even more extensive global expansion of legal aid and a revitalized discussion about expanding access to justice has been occurring in recent years. The global Access to Justice study, now underway aims to contribute to the new discourse by examining developments that have occurred between the first expansion of legal aid, documented and examined by early publications, to the present. It is intended that the study will contribute by adding a historical and comparative analysis to the discussion of current issues and future development of access to justice. The project is being led by a co-ordinating team including academics and experts who helped to document early developments in the access to justice movement. The coordinating group includes Earl Johnson, Bryant Garth, Alan Paterson, Cleber Alves and Diogo Esteves. Earl Johnson, along with Mauro Cappelletti and James Gordley wrote the landmark study “Toward Equal Justice: A Comparative Study of Legal Aid in Modern Societies” (1975). Alan Paterson has been the chair of the International Legal Aid Group since the mid-1970’s and has occupied a central role monitoring developments and advising governments on legal aid. Bryant Garth, with Mauro Cappelletti, produced the influential world survey of legal aid known as the “Florence Access to justice Project” carried out in 1976-77.
The 1975 “Toward Equal Justice” study attempted to document and explain what was becoming an international movement to make legal aid available to all regardless of income. A few years later Mauro Cappelletti and Bryant Garth carried out the “Florence Access to Justice Project”, the landmark global survey of access to justice of the early access to justice era. The results of this comparative research were published as the five-volume work “Access to Justice: A World Survey” (1978). In volume one of the Florence Project report, Cappelletti and Garth set out the very influential three waves model describing the evolution of access to justice. The first wave was the development of mechanisms to provide access to legal representation of individual interests. The second wave was the representation of diffuse collective interests. The third wave involved the development of a range of alternative dispute resolution approaches to resolving legal problems. In the years following this publication, scholars proposed further waves of access to justice to describe continuing developments such as the professionalization of legal ethics(a fourth wave), and the institutionalization of human rights protections(a fifth wave).
The Global Access to Justice survey includes more than 160 countries in the following regions: North America, Central and South America, the Nordic countries, Western and Central Europe, the Middle East, Northern Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Asia-Pacific region and Oceania. The present study will include a greatly expanded range of topics compared with the earlier research. These include: the cost of resolving disputes within the formal justice system, contemporary initiatives to give representation to collective and diffuse rights, initiatives to improve the machinery of dispute processing, developments in civil procedure, developments in criminal procedure, alternative dispute resolution, simplification of law and by-passing legal procedures, changes in professional legal ethics, expansion of human rights, new technologies for improving access to justice, sociological approaches to addressing unmet needs, cultural dimensions of the access problem, learnings from First Nations peoples and, developments in legal education. The final report will further include summary volumes containing individual country reports. The chapter on Canada is being written by Melina Buckley, a Board Member of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice and Chair of the Canadian Bar Association Legal Aid Committee; Ab Currie, Senior Research Fellow at the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice and Trevor Farrow, Professor of Law at York University and Chair of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice.
This project is occurring as a revival of the access to justice movement is taking place, driven in part by United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 to “promote, just, peaceful and inclusive societies”. Within this overall guiding principle, a number of organizations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank, the United Nations and the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies are working in different ways to close the justice gap. In particular, the Pathfinders are working to inspire justice reform movements that will create a global momentum for justice and substantially enhance justice for all by 2030, in line with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.[1].
The Global Access project shares with the sustainable development-oriented access to justice movement the foundational propositions about the importance of the rule of law in ensuring democratic, egalitarian states and that assuring equal rights is instrumental in addressing the problems of social exclusion, marginalization and social disadvantage. The Global Access to Justice Project will add to the discourse by taking a comparative, empirically-based look at what has occurred and is occurring in access to justice throughout the world. It aims to undertake a comprehensive analysis of what has been attempted, what has failed and what has worked well within specific contexts to make legal assistance available to people. The results of the research will inform discussions about expanding access to justice. Current plans are that the work will be completed and submitted for publication in the fall of 2020. The report of the Global Access to Justice Project will undoubtedly make an important contribution to what is at present an exciting and promising revival of the access to justice movement. More detail about the project is available on the web site at globalaccesstojustice.com. Questions about the project or offers to assist can be sent by e-mail to globalaccesstojustice@gmail.com.
[1] See further Task Force on Justice, Justice for All – The Report of the Task Force on Justice (New York: Center on International Cooperation, 2019) online: Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies <https://www.hiil.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Justice-for-All-report-1.pdf>.