One of the definitions of access to justice is ‘the ability of all people to seek and obtain effective remedies through accessible, affordable, impartial, effective, efficient and culturally competent institutions of justice (Agrast et al 2012/13).
Genn (2012) stated that access to justice is about just outcomes on the basis of rules or legal principles in accordance with the rule of law.
In their report ‘Access denied the state of the justice system in England and Wales in 2022, the Bar Council UK stated that ‘a fair and just society requires fair access to justice – yet many people in England and Wales today struggle to exercise that right.’ Access to justice is a public facing concept.
As a result of pressures of cost saving in the justice system and many court buildings unsustainable to maintain, a lot have been closed down. Between 2010 – 2019 over half of the courts across England and Wales were closed (140 courts in 2011 review).
Additionally, to fund modernisation, a second wave of 86 court closures in 2016.
Literature we are engaging with:
Liz Curran, Jane Ching, Jane Jarman (2024) Regulatory Leadership on Access to Justice
Legal problems happen frequently and have an impact on people’s lives, they are not marginal issues; they are central to wellbeing, equality and access to justice.
People need to mobilise capabilities to be able to access the justice system.
However, research has shown that:
People lack knowledge and awareness (‘Legal Capability’ is Low)
Legal capability matters for how people handle Legal Problems
There are many obstacles in the way of people’s capabilities and their development
With this in mind, what is the role of public legal education to prepare people for the digital justice system?
Literature we are engaging with:
We are interested in understanding the complex notion of deservingness through the lens of different actors: the state, institutions and charities, and the social welfare applicants.
Literature we are engaging with:
Digital technologies are reshaping the boundaries of justice systems, moving traditional in-person interactions to digitally mediated interactions.
Literature we are engaging with:
Katsh, E., & Rabinovich-Einy, O. (2017). Digital justice: technology and the internet of disputes. Oxford University Press.
Mentovich, A., Prescott, J. J., & Rabinovich-Einy, O. (2023). Legitimacy and online proceedings: Procedural justice, access to justice, and the role of income. Law & Society Review, 57(2), 189-213.
Rabinovich-Einy, O., & Katsh, E. (2014). Digital Justice: reshaping boundaries in an online dispute resolution environment. IJODR, 1, 5.
Our legal consciousness is how we think about the law and our encounters with legal institutions.
The lens of legal consciousness allows us to discover different images of legality, attitudes towards law and specific context related narratives (Hertogh, M. (2004), Silbey, S. (2005), Engel, D. (1998)).
Chua and Engel (2019) re-evaluated the field of legal consciousness studies. They identify three schools of through that contribute to the multifaceted understanding of legal consciousness.
They emphasize that legal consciousness should be viewed along a continuum—from individualistic interpretations to relational, co-constructed understandings.
This perspective acknowledges that individuals’ interactions with the law are influenced not only by personal beliefs but also by social relationships and cultural contexts.
This can be thought of through different lenses:
Identity School: Focuses on how individuals’ legal experiences shape their identities and perceptions of the law.
Hegemony School: Examines how legal systems maintain dominance and how individuals may unconsciously uphold these structures.
Mobilization School: Investigates how people actively use legal mechanisms to pursue change or protect rights.
Literature we are engaging with:
This is the concept we are exploring empirically, based on initial theorising: Digital legal consciousness emerges from the interplay between legal and digital capabilities, as individuals navigate the digital environment, internalising or resisting legal norms and societal values Creutzfeldt 2021.
A report on Digitisation and Accessing Justice in the Community (Sechi, 2020), finds that ‘many of the respondent organisations have service users who are “vulnerable” and the most needy in society.
A large number of people approaching advice providers for help with a legal problem would need support and legal advice, together with ongoing digital assistance to navigate an online justice system’ (ibid , p. 7).
Obtaining legal advice can help prevent problems from becoming unmanageable and assist people to access their rights.
The Low Commission follow-up report found that people being left without early advice and possible redress makes services less accountable to their users (Low commission, 2015) see for more detail Creutzfeldt & Sechi 2021.
Literature we are engaging with:
Literature we are engaging with:
The literature explores the meaning, limits, and conditions of effective participation across public, legal, and digital contexts. Arnstein (2019) conceptualises citizen participation as fundamentally about the redistribution of power, proposing her influential “ladder” typology to distinguish between tokenistic involvement and genuine citizen control, and arguing that without real power-sharing, participation rhetoric can entrench exclusion. This gives us a way to understand how the rhetoric around citizen participation and the responses to efforts to expand citizen participation by disadvantaged and marginal communities contribute to their ongoing disempowerment and exclusion from decision-making and control over their social circumstances. Effective participation requires redistribution of power.
Building on this critical lens, Ianniello et al. (2019) systematically review evidence on citizen participation and identify persistent obstacles—such as information asymmetries, poor process design, weak representation, and problematic group dynamics—while noting that although participation can enhance accountability, transparency and tailored decision-making, there is limited evidence that it improves efficiency or effectiveness. This is important to our work, as it encourages us to question any initiatives that aim to increase citizen participation in the design and implementation of systems and processes.
Carney (2013), writing in the Australian context, examines supported decision-making for people with intellectual disability and concludes that while law can act as advocacy or brokerage, its practical contribution to securing meaningful participation and service access is small.
Donoghue (2017) argues that digital courtroom reforms risk undermining democratic legitimacy and access to justice if implemented without attention to the quality of participation, legal representation and ethical safeguards. Updating IT systems will only enable proper participation when accompanied by a broader commitment to ensuring adequate access to legal representation and advice. Technologies have, to date, been evaluated primarily on criteria such as cost and speed rather than on access to justice and equal treatment. The approach to digitisation fails to adequately account for the availability of legal services as an essential element in improving participation and outcomes. This means that we need to consider human rights/ethics compliance in digital settings as well as how clients perceive the role of the adviser – do they simply want a solution to their problem, or are they also looking for emotional/psychological support?
Literature we are engaging with:
Literature we are engaging with: