Access to JusticeRebecca L. Sanderfur Around the world today, access to justice enjoys an energetic and passionate resurgence as an object both of scholarly inquiry and political contest, as both a social movement and a value commitment motivating study and action. This volume brings together cutting-edge work from practitioners and scholars in law, political science, social psychology, sociology, and sociolinguistics. This work reflects a high degree of sophistication in empirical analysis, and, as importantly, evidences a deeper engagement with social theory than past generations of scholarship. Good understanding is valuable both for its own sake and because it is essential to good policy. The richer conceptual frameworks employed by these scholars create more sophisticated research questions that in turn inform a more nuanced policy agenda. This research - on rights knowledge and police procedure, race and jury deliberation, tort reform and access to lawyers, self-interest and public service, ordinary people's experience with everyday troubles - reveals new discoveries about law and social process and provides foundation for a deeper understanding of access to justice that can inform wiser, more effective policies. |
Contents
| 1 | |
Indications from the english and welsh civil and social justice survey of the relative severity and incidence of civil justice problems | 43 |
A theoretical and empirical inquiry | 67 |
Exploring the idea of designated spanishspeaking courtrooms to address language barriers to justice in the United States | 97 |
Some puzzles regarding race and jury participation | 119 |
Access selfinterest and pro bono | 145 |
The role of legal advice centers | 167 |
How personal injury lawyers screen cases in an era of tort reform | 203 |
Toward a sociology of troubles | 231 |
A revival of access to justice research? | 255 |
Subject Index | 261 |
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Common terms and phrases
access to justice action African Americans areas argue attorney Bar Association behavior bono partner Canadian Chicago civil justice problems claiming clients confidence interval consent searches consumer problems court interpreters criminal procedure defendant dispute experienced Felstiner firm’s forgetting curves Fourth Amendment Genn grievances Hazel Genn important individual JFBA jurors justice system justiciable problems Law and Society law firms law offices Law Review legal advice centers legal aid legal consultation legal needs legal problems legal professional legal services Legal Services Commission literature litigants memory decay non-legal numbers of problems Odds ratio outcome participation people’s percentage peremptory challenge personal injury plaintiffs Pleasence police potential problem types problems related products liability questions race racial RC ¼ reported resolve respondents rights consciousness roller sticks Sandefur service providers Sixth Amendment social movement social problems Society Review sociology of troubles suggest survey Table tort reform trial χ2 ¼