Public Interest and Access to Justice: A Liminal Analysis

Abstract

The paper argues that there exists a contradiction between access to justice and public interest. It substantiates this claim by reviewing selected arguments for access to justice and by referring to empirical evidence. The contradiction is then interpreted using a sociological theory of law, which enables establishing the structural reasons for such a clash. In order to reconcile access to justice with the public interest, the legal system must develop the semantics allowing for a better understanding of social inclusion conditions. In particular, the legal system must finally do away with pre-modern charity-oriented concept of access to justice, be able to grasp access to justice in its totality and reflect on conditions of legal inclusion. If it fails to do that, it is doomed to reproduce the conflict. The concept of access to justice developed by Cappelletti and others in the 1970s is a good point of departure here, but it is by far insufficient.

The anti‐LGBTIQ campaign in Poland: The established, the outsiders, and the legal performance of exclusion

“…In these processes, law and inequality are structurally interconnected. The broad range of issues that foreground the role of law in creating social exclusion includes the phrasing of legal acts, the language of legal proceedings, procedural norms, access to justice, legal education, legal consciousness, and the social communication of law (see, e.g., Buck et al, 2005;MacKinnon, 2005;Winczorek, 2020). Scholars have shown that law is instrumental in creating and sustaining inequality, which can lead to exclusion defined in ecological, economic, political, cultural, and other terms, both in particular nation-state societies and globally (see, e.g., Boatc a & Roth, 2016;Rhode, 1991;Sen, 1987).…”

“…Summarizing the mission of sociolegal studies in the face of the growth of inequality in the modern world, Carrol Seron (2016, p. 17) stresses the need to give more consideration to “what we all seek to teach our undergraduates in an introductory sociology or law and society class: [that] inequalities are embedded in structural and systemic processes.” In these processes, law and inequality are structurally interconnected. The broad range of issues that foreground the role of law in creating social exclusion includes the phrasing of legal acts, the language of legal proceedings, procedural norms, access to justice, legal education, legal consciousness, and the social communication of law (see, e.g., Buck et al, 2005; MacKinnon, 2005; Winczorek, 2020). Scholars have shown that law is instrumental in creating and sustaining inequality, which can lead to exclusion defined in ecological, economic, political, cultural, and other terms, both in particular nation‐state societies and globally (see, e.g., Boatcă & Roth, 2016; Rhode, 1991; Sen, 1987).…”