When legal rights are not a reality: do individuals know their rights and how can we tell?

Abstract

Public knowledge of rights has been the subject of a number of empirical enquiries over the last decade. In England and Wales, knowledge of rights and its relationship with an individual's capacity to ‘self-help’ and ‘self-represent’ when faced with a civil justice problem has become the subject of renewed attention following changes to legal aid which, from March 2013, will see the availability of legal advice and representation dramatically reduced. Previous studies focusing on public knowledge of rights in this (and other) jurisdictions have illustrated a lack of knowledge amongst the general population and more specifically, a widespread tendency of individuals to assume that the law aligns with their own moral, ethical or social attitudes. However, many of these studies have also suffered from methodological shortcomings. In attempting to address some of these shortcomings this study uses an open-ended format to ask individuals with one or one or more civil or social justice problems to describe their rights/legal position. We find that whilst an open-ended question approach to exploring knowledge of rights yields insight not acquired by other formats, its utility is constrained by difficulty reconciling articulation and actual knowledge of rights. We discuss the implications of these findings as they relate to the development of future research in the field of family and social welfare law, Public Legal Education (PLE) and access to justice post-March 2013.

Child care and health rights: perspectives of adolescent mothers

“…The perception of mothers together with their children as subjects who hold rights can help them to develop their potential and role, as well as in the construction of citizenship, helping reduce the distance between those exposed by laws and the concrete reality of life (7,12) .…”

“…Studies have also emphasized the importance of knowledge of rights by persons related to the capacity of care and self-care (12) , understanding the child as being entitled to rights (6) , to the way rights are recognized by the families (13) and its benefits for clinical practice (4) .…”

Legal Aid in Sweden

“…In this type of case, the legal clinic can inform people about their rights and what they can expect from, for example, the authorities. The classic Norwegian legal aid study (Eskeland and Finne 1973) and more recent international studies (Curran and Noone 2008;Denvir et al 2013) indicate that people rarely know their rights or what they are entitled to. Furthermore, research has shown that people often do not see their problems as legal ones (Sandefur 2009).…”

Measurement of legal empowerment through the subjective perceptions of individuals

“…Gathering information on the general population is necessary. However, general population surveys are expensive, and time consuming to conduct, and most individuals do not have an in-depth knowledge of legal processes and procedures (Balmer et al 2010;Denvir et al 2013). Thus, traditional examinations of knowledge or legal experience are not applicable.…”