Access to Justice: Books

Table of Contents
The historical recovery of the human person as subject of the law of nations
The exercise of the right of access to international justice : the right of international individual petition
Access to justice at international level and the right to an effective domestic remedy
The interrelation between the access to justice (right to an effective remedy) and the guarantees of the due process of law
Access to international justice in relation to the interaction between international law and domestic law
Access to justice : the safeguard and preservation of the integrity of international jurisdiction
New developments in the notion of "potential victim" : the preventive dimension of protection
The protection of victims in situations of great adversity or defencelessness : I
The protection of victims in situations of great adversity or defencelessness : II
Access to justice of victims of massacres and crimes of state
The overcoming of obstacles to direct access to justice

"Equal Justice Under Law" is one of America's most proudly proclaimed and widely violated legal principles. But it comes nowhere close to describing the legal system in practice. Millions of Americans lack any access to justice, let alone equal access. Worse, the increasing centrality of law in American life and its growing complexity has made access to legal assistance critical for all citizens. Yet according to most estimates about four-fifths of the legal needs of the poor, and two- to three-fifths of the needs of middle-income individuals remain unmet. This book reveals the inequities of legal assistance in America, from the lack of access to educational services and health benefits to gross injustices in the criminal defense system. It proposes a specific agenda for change, offering tangible reforms for coordinating comprehensive systems for the delivery of legal services, maximizing individual's opportunities to represent themselves, and making effective legal services more affordable for all Americans who need them. (publisher description)

This groundbreaking book offers a compelling articulation of the right of access to justice for individuals facing human rights violations by international organizations. Following an examination of the human rights obligations of a variety of international organizations, the author scrutinizes their dispute settlement mechanisms as well as the conflict between their immunities and the right of access to justice before national jurisdictions. Highlighting recent examples, such as the cholera outbreak in Haiti, this book reveals how individual victims of human rights violations by international organizations are frequently left in the cold, due to the lack of an independent, impartial dispute settlement mechanism before which they can file such claims. Considering both global mechanisms and current mechanisms established by international organizations such as administrative jurisdictions for employment-related disputes, Pierre Schmitt finds that they either are not competent or that they have a limited scope. He concludes by offering normative proposals addressed both to international organizations and to national judges confronted with such cases. Offering a wealth of empirical and practical wisdom, this book will appeal to scholars in public international law and human rights. It is also a must-read for practitioners, judges and legal advisers working in the field and will prove a useful tool for national authorities negotiating immunity conventions with international organizations (publisher description).

This collection of essays offers seven distinct perspectives on the present status of access to justice: its development in customary international law, the stress put on it in times of emergency, its problematic exercise in the case of violations of the law of war, its application to torture victims, its development in the case law of the UN Human Rights Committee and of the European Court of Human Rights, its application to the emerging field of environmental justice, and finally access to justice as part of fundamental rights in European law (provided by publisher).

This book examines how to push forward access to justice in environmental matters in the EU. The authors analyze four options from a law and economics and law and society perspective. In addition, they include an empirical study of the consequences of the four option in Latvia, the United Kingdom and Germany. The goal of the book is twofold: (a) to highlight the differences between the four options from an economic perspective and (b) to investigate to what extent the absence of an EU-wide regime for access to justice in environmental matters is disadvantageous. This book is unique as for the first time, an in-depth socio-economic analysis of access to justice is given. The book is of interest to EU environmental lawyer and policymakers (provided by the publisher).

If someone assaults you, should they get a milder penalty if they are rich than if they are poor? We wouldn't dream of passing a law that formalized such an arrangement. But the design of our legal systems in the US, UK, and elsewhere, which permits people with sufficient money to pay for better lawyers, means that wealth often does make a difference to legal outcomes. Justice, then, depends not only on the substance of the laws we pass, but on the design of the system that administers and enforces them. Philosophers and legal theorists, however, have paid relatively little attention to what justice demands of the general design and structure of the legal system. Equal Justice argues among other things that market principles should not determine access to legal resources. If, for example, a large corporation sues a small startup, either the corporation has to use a law firm of the quality that the startup can afford or--which would be preferable, given the corporation's in-house lawyers--the startup would be given a subsidy to afford a top firm. The author builds on this core idea of equal access to resources to work out how the court system and the legal profession should be structured in order to ensure a generally just legal system.-- Provided by publisher

"Many state and federal environmental agencies have put in place programs, policies, and practices to redress environmental injustices, and yet these efforts fall short of meeting the principles that environmental justice activists have fought for. In From the Inside Out, Jill Lindsey Harrison offers an account of the bureaucratic culture that hinders regulatory agencies' attempts to reduce environmental injustices. It is now widely accepted that America's poorest communities, communities of color, and Native American communities suffer disproportionate harm from environmental hazards, with higher exposure to pollution and higher incidence of lead poisoning, cancer, asthma, and other diseases linked to environmental ills. And yet, Harrison reports, some regulatory staff view these problems as beyond their agencies' area of concern, requiring too many resources, or see neutrality as demanding "color-blind" administration. Drawing on more than 160 interviews (with interviewees including 89 current or former agency staff members and more than 50 environmental justice activists and others who interact with regulatory agencies) and more than 50 hours of participant observation of agency meetings (both open- and closed-door), Harrison offers a unique account of how bureaucrats resist, undermine, and disparage environmental justice reform--and how environmental justice reformers within the agencies fight back by trying to change regulatory practice and culture from the inside out. Harrison argues that equity, not just aggregated overall improvement, should be a metric for evaluating environmental regulation." -- Provided by publisher

Table of Contents
The growth of government regulation in the United States
The development of the Equal Access to Justice Act
Use and amendment of the Equal Access to Justice Act from 1981 to 1985
Success and expansion of the Equal Access to Justice Act after 1985
The universe of the eco-crusaders
Barbarians at the gate : saints and sinners
The environmental litigation crisis
Cooperative conservation: preempting listings and building trust
Abuses of the Equal Access to Justice Act : endangered species and beyond
Reforming the Equal Access to Justice Act

"Who ought to do what, and for whom, if global justice is to progress? In this collection of essays on justice beyond borders, Onora O'Neill criticises theoretical approaches that concentrate on rights, yet ignore both the obligations that must be met to realise those rights, and the capacities needed by those who shoulder these obligations. She notes that states are profoundly anti-cosmopolitan institutions, and that even those committed to justice and universal rights often lack the competence and the will to secure them, let alone to secure them beyond their borders. She argues for a wider conception of global justice, in which obligations may be held either by states or by competent non-state actors, and in which borders themselves must meet standards of justice. This rich and wide-ranging collection will appeal to a wide range of academic researchers and advanced students of political philosophy, political theory, international relations and philosophy of law"-- Provided by publisher

Table of Contents
Introduction - Ayesha Kadwani Dias and Gita Honwana Welch
International law and sources of access to justice - Ayesha Kadwani Dias
The renascent access notions : globalization and access to justice - Upendra Baxi
Community, justice institutions, and judicialization : lessons from rural Peru - Julio Faundez
Women and access to justice - Fareda Banda
Access to justice and women's human rights in a plural legal framework : a case study of the application of Hudood laws in Pakistan - Shaheen Sardar Ali
The public interest movement in South Africa : law as a means of promoting social justice - Geoff Budlender
Social action litigation and access to justice in Nigeria : a critical case study - Shedrack C. Agbakwa and Obiora Chinedu Okafor
Public interest litigation in Central and Eastern Europe - James A. Goldston
Independence of courts and access to justice in Kenya : a new constitutional vision - Jill Cottrell and Yash Ghai
Judicial and anti-corruption reform in Africa : between market efficiency and access to justice for the poor - James Thuo Gathii
Legitimacy, accountability, and judicial independence : towards judicial effectiveness - Mohamed C. Othman
Focusing on legal empowerment : the UNDP LEAD project in Indonesia - Stephen Golub
Expanding access to justice in Africa : experiences and perspectives - Francesca Dagnino
Delivery of legal aid services in developing countries : in the light of the South African experience - David McQuoid-Mason
Advancing access to justice in Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States : the experience of UNDP - Allan McChesney
Access to Justice in the Arab region - Noha El-Mikawy and Zena Ali Ahmed
Access to justice in Latin America : approach and experience - Silvina Ramirez, Leire Otamendi, and Alejandro Alvarez
Avatars of rule of law and access to justice : some Asian aspects - R. Sudarshan
Epilogue

"[This book] provides a vivid portrait and appraisal of how the lives of poor people are disrupted or helped by the judicial system, from the lowest to the highest courts. Drawing from court room observations, court decisions, and other material, this book spans the street level justice of administrative hearings and lower courts (where people plead for welfare benefits or for a child not to be taken away), the mid-level justice of state courts (where advocates argue for the right to shelter for the homeless and for the rights of the mentally disabled), and the high justice of the Supreme Court (where the battle for school integration has represented a route out of poverty and the stop and frisk cases illustrate a route to greater poverty, through the mass incarceration of people of color). [The book] brings readers inside the courts, telling the story through the words and actions of the judges, lawyers, and ordinary people who populate it. It seeks to both edify and criticize. Readers will learn not only how courts work, but also how courts sometimes help - and often fail - the poor." -- Back cover

Around four billion people globally are unable to address their everyday legal problems and do not have the security, opportunity or protection to redress their grievances and injustices. Courts and legal institutions can often be out of reach because of costs, distance, or a lack of knowledge of rights and entitlements and judicial institutions may be under-funded leading to poor judicial infrastructure, inadequate staff, and limited resources to meet the needs of those who require such services. This book sets out to embed access to justice into mainstream discussions on the future of law and to explore how this can be addressed in different parts of the legal industry. It examines what changes in technology mean for the end user, whether an ordinary citizen, a client or a student. It looks at the everyday practice of law through a sector wide analysis of law firms, universities, startups and civil society organizations. In doing so, the book provides a roadmap on how to address sector specific access to justice questions and to draw lessons for the future. The book draws on experiences from judges, academics, practitioners, policy makers and educators and presents perspectives from both the Global South and the Global North.

"American statesman Sargent Shriver called the Legal Services Program the "most important" of all the War on Poverty programs he started; American Bar Association president Edward Kuhn said its creation was the most important development in the history of the legal profession. Earl Johnson Jr., a former director of the War on Poverty's Legal Services Program, provides a vivid account of the entire history of civil legal aid from its inception in 1876 to the current day. The first to capture the full story of the dramatic, ongoing struggle to bring equal justice to those unable to afford a lawyer, this monumental three-volume work covers the personalities and events leading to a national legal aid movement - and decades later, the federal government's entry into the field, and its creation of a unique institution, an independent Legal Services Corporation, to run the program. The narrative also covers the landmark court victories the attorneys won and the political controversies those cases generated, along with the heated congressional battles over the shape and survival of the Legal Services Corporation. In the final chapters, the author assesses the current state of civil legal aid and its future prospects in the United States."--pub. desc

"Tort reform is a favorite cause for many business leaders and right-leaning politicians, who contend that out-of-control lawsuits throttle growth and inflate costs, particularly in healthcare. Less is said about how such reforms might affect the ability of individuals to recover damages for injuries suffered through another party's negligence. On that count, Texas--where efforts at tort reform have been energetic and successful--provides an opportunity to appraise the outcome for plaintiffs and their lawyers, an opportunity that Stephen Daniels and Joanne Martin take full advantage of in this timely and provocative work. Because much of the action on tort reform takes place on the state level, a look at the experience of Texas, a large and important state with a very active plaintiff's bar, is especially instructive. Plaintiffs' lawyers work on a contingency fee basis, collecting compensation for themselves as a percentage only if they win. Reduce lawyers' ability to use contingency fees as compensation, as tort reform inevitably does, and you reduce their economic incentive to do this work. Daniels' and Martin's study bears this out. Drawing on over 20 years of research, extensive surveys and interviews, the authors explore the impact the tort reform movement in Texas has had on the ability of plaintiffs to obtain judgments--in short on private citizens' meaningful access to the full power of the law. In the course of their analysis, the authors explain the history and economics behind the workings of the plaintiffs' bar. They explore how lawyers select cases and clients, as well as the referral process that moves cases among lawyers and allows for specialization. They also examine the effects of medical malpractice reforms on plaintiffs' lawyers--reforms that often close the courthouse doors to certain types of people--tort reform's "hidden victims." Plaintiffs' lawyers are the civil justice system's gatekeepers, providing meaningful access to the rights the law provides. Daniels's and Martin's thorough and fair-minded work offers a unique and sobering perspective on how tort reform can curtail this access--and thus, the legal rights of American citizens"-- Provided by publisher