Access to justice and enforcement of rights – an introduction

Abstract

The debates on access to justice emerged from the historical contexts of post-industrial Western countries, and the concept gained prominence in the 1960s, during the rise of the welfare state (Maranlou, 2014: 17).1 A major turning point in the discourse was the Florence Access to Justice Project, led by Mauro Cappelletti and Bryant Garth (1981). In October 1979, a conference at the European University Institute examined the prospects for further action, and participants sought to identify the most pressing issues, evaluate key insights, and assess the broader significance of what they termed the “access to justice” movement (Cappelletti, Garth, 1981: 3). Cappelletti and Garth discuss three “waves” of access to justice. The first wave was concerned primarily with access to courts, and the emphasis was on the problems faced by poor and marginalized groups in accessing expensive legal services and complex legal systems. The second wave related to access to justice gaps that arise not predominantly because of socio-economic factors, but as a result of the nature of the problems people experience in particular contexts. For example, so-called “diffuse interests” include consumer problems, where large groups are affected by similar issues, but there are difficulties in launching individual claims and, as a result, a significant access to justice gap. The third wave, while continuing to incorporate the concerns of the first and second waves, broadened the concern of access to justice even further, so that a host of procedural innovations that might allow access to justice began to be discussed. This included alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and other means by which people might resolve their problems without accessing the courts (Garth, Cappelletti, 1981: 9-25).