ABSTRACT
This is an overview of access to justice as a concept, both historically, substantively and internationally. Access to justice as a concept is both new and ancient. New in that a greater focus and recognition of access to justice as a principle in itself has been evolving in recent decades, finding identifying access to justice as a basic component of the rule of law. Those without the resources and power to assert rights, and here more specifically equality rights, must be able to do so if those rights are to have meaning. Ancient in that procedural and other rules have always been put into place by those with power so that certain legal rights could not be exercised by those supposedly protected. Ancient also in that ideas close to access to justice, such as audi alteram partem, listen to the other party, can be found already, for example, with Aeschylus (Aeschylus [1926] 431, 435). In the field of equality law, access to justice has successively been recognized as integral to achieving equality. This progression can be traced in modern times during the struggles for emancipation of slaves, women, workers and children at the end of the 19th century. The law in books, as coined by Roscoe Pound, no longer is seen as solely sufficient, with the objective being the law in action: ‘A great deal of the law in the books is not enforced in practice because our machinery of justice is too slow, too cumbersome and too expensive to make it effective’ (Pound [1920] at 35-36).
Carlson, Laura, Access to Justice (September 16, 2024).
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