Law Commons^™

Leveraging Technology To Promote Access To Justice, Amy Emerson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Post-Pandemic Finra Arbitration: To Zoom Or Not To Zoom?, Jill I. Gross

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article contributes to the literature exploring the impact of the pandemic on arbitration and explores whether parties arbitrating their disputes during the pandemic have had access to justice equivalent to the justice that was available pre-pandemic. Though it is difficult to draw any conclusions about FINRA arbitration due to the confidential and non-reasoned nature of awards, the Article focuses on arbitration of securities industry disputes at one forum, FINRA DRS. In particular, the Article analyzes data about FINRA customer arbitrations over the course of the pandemic, from onset in March 2020 through mid-2022, when most municipalities had lifted COVID-19 …

Racial Capitalism In The Civil Courts, Tonya L. Brito, Kathryn A. Sabbeth, Jessica Steinberg, Lauren Sudeall

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Essay explores how civil courts function as sites of racial capitalism. The racial capitalism conceptual framework posits that capitalism requires racial inequality and relies on racialized systems of expropriation to produce capital. While often associated with traditional economic systems, racial capitalism applies equally to nonmarket settings, including civil courts.

The lens of racial capitalism enriches access to justice scholarship by explaining how and why state civil courts subordinate racialized groups and individuals. Civil cases are often framed as voluntary disputes among private parties, yet many racially and economically marginalized litigants enter the civil legal system involuntarily, and the state …

“By Accident Of Birth”: The Battle Over Birthright Citizenship After United States V. Wong Kim Ark, Amanda Frost

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In theory, birthright citizenship has been well established in U.S. law since 1898, when the Supreme Court held in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that all born on U.S. soil are U.S. citizens. The experience of immigrants and their families over the last 120 years tells a different story, however. This article draws on government records documenting the Wong family's struggle for legal recognition to illuminate the convoluted history of birthright citizenship. Newly discovered archival materials reveal that Wong Kim Ark and his family experienced firsthand, and at times shaped, the fluctuating relationship between immigration, citizenship, and access to …

Arbitration Archetypes For Enhancing Access To Justice, Jill I. Gross

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In the second half of the twentieth century, the use of arbitration proliferated in the United States as part of a greater alternative dispute resolution (ADR) movement, with the promise that using ADR processes would, among other things, enhance disputants' access to justice. Arbitration offers disputing parties a process to resolve their dispute, which, at least in theory, is known for decreased cost, increased speed, party control, privacy, and finality. These characteristics generally enhance parties' access to justice because, as compared to litigation, barriers to entry are lower, outcomes are delivered more quickly, substantive outcomes are more equitable, and parties …

Judicial Mediation: From Debates To Renewal, Jean-Francois Roberge, Dorcas Quek Anderson

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Judicial mediation involving a judge actingas a mediator in a court dispute has been implemented in many jurisdictionsworldwide as a way to overcome access to justice challenges. This innovationhas raised many debates on the changing role of the judge built on either its congruence with or divergence from judicial adjudication. Over the years, thesedebates have become increasingly stagnant. The evolving vision on access tojustice brings an opportunity to draw from the earlier debates and forge adifferent way forward. This paper argues that a coequality approach to understanding judicial mediation is a betterway to design the process in a way that …

Access To Knowledge And The Global Abortion Policies Database, Joanna Erdman, Brooke Johnson

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Research shows that women, healthcare providers, and even policy makers worldwide have limited or inaccurate knowledge of the abortion law and policies in their country. These knowledge gaps sometimes stem from the vague and broad terms of the law, which breed uncertainty and even conflict when unaccompanied by accessible regulation or guidelines. Inconsistency across national law and policy further impedes safe and evidence‐based practice. This lack of transparency creates a crisis of accountability. Those seeking care cannot know their legal entitlements, service providers cannot practice with legal protection, and governments can escape legal responsibility for the adverse effects of their …

Assessing Access-To-Justice Outreach Strategies, Jj Prescott

Law & Economics Working Papers

The need for prospective beneficiaries to “take up” new programs is a common stumbling block for otherwise well-designed legal and policy innovations. I examine the take-up problem in the context of publicly provided court services and test the effectiveness of various outreach strategies that announce a newly available online court access platform. I study individuals with minor arrest warrants whose distrust of courts may dampen any take-up response. I partnered with a court to quasi-randomly assign outreach approaches to a cohort of individuals and find that outreach improves take-up, that the type of outreach matters, and that online platform access …

Liba2j! The Continuum Of Access To Justice Services, Yolanda Jones

Library Faculty Publications

Some have urged law libraries to undergo what appears to be a large-scale transformation, where access to justice in incorporated as a core feature of the library mission. While Access to Justice (A2J) services are provided by many libraries, they can be seen by law library managers as costly, unfunded mandate. One way of approaching the issue is to consider library access to justice services as a continuum within the broader range of legal services. Within this Library Access to Justice Continuum (LIBA2J), librarians can select access to justice services consistent with their mission, budget, and general library resources. For …

Riding Circuit: Bringing The Law To Those Who Need It, Susan Zago

Law Faculty Scholarship

This article surveys the Access to Justice movement in the United States and proposes including more types of professionals to develop longer term solutions that will alleviate barriers to the court system. This article discusses the need to expand the access to justice concept to reach beyond the courthouse to address civil legal issues before they blossom into litigation. Mobile outreach providing preventive lawyering and early treatment of societal problems can prevent delays and the bottleneck that many courts are seeing with the vast numbers of Self-Represented Litigants. A team of professionals including lawyers, social workers, nurses, counselors, translators and …

Experiencing Experiential Education: A Faculty-Student Perspective On The University Of Tennessee College Of Law's Adventure In Access To Justice Author, Robert C. Blitt

Scholarly Works

This article functions both as a brief history lesson in experiential education and as a case study of an experiential course entitled “Human Rights Practicum” offered at the University of Tennessee College of Law in 2015. After briefly discussing historical and current trends in law school reform, including the rise of experiential education within the law school curriculum and the role played by technology in this context, the article turns to explore the impetus for the Human Rights Practicum, its development and implementation, as well as the software technology used to develop its final work product, a web-based “guided interview” …

Bridging The Justice Gap In Family Law: Repurposing Federal Iv-D Funding To Expand Community-Based Legal And Social Services For Parents, Lisa V. Martin, Stacy Brustin

Faculty Publications

Parents in family court overwhelmingly proceed pro se; however, in child support courtrooms, government attorneys representing the state child support agency frequently play a pivotal role. These attorneys represent the state’s ostensible interests in ensuring that children are financially supported and in preventing welfare dependence; they do not represent individual parents. The outcomes of child support proceedings have profound, long-term constitutional and financial implications for parents, yet litigants rarely understand their rights or the role of the government.

Originally, the goal of state child support enforcement efforts was to recapture the costs of welfare expenditures. In 1990, two-thirds of cases …

Rationed Justice, Jennifer M. Smith

Journal Publications

In the United States, "equal justice under law" is at the very forefront of our American justice system. "Equal justice" is meant to guarantee equal access to the justice system. "Equal access to the judicial process is the sin qua non of a just society." Many Americans, however, do not have any access to the justice system, never mind that of equal access. "Equal justice" has not reached the nation's indigent, or even many of our moderate-income citizens.

Introduction: What We Know And Need To Know About The State Of 'Access To Justice' Research, Elizabeth Chambliss, Renee N. Knake, Robert L. Nelson

Faculty Publications

Ongoing, systematic research on civil legal needs and services is an essential component of improving the quality and availability of such services. Collaboration among researchers, legal services providers, and regulators will only become more important as innovations in the delivery of legal services progress. This volume brings together sixteen white papers by subject matter experts who assess "what we know and need to know" about various aspects of civil legal services delivery. The product of a partnership between the South Carolina Law Review and the ABA Commission on the Future of Legal Services, the collection is intended to serve as …

Bend Or Break: Enhancing The Responsibilities Of Law Societies To Promote Access To Justice, Richard Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

There now appears to be a consensus in Canada that we have a serious access to justice problem. Chief Justices have been vocal. The Governor-General has made an intervention. Legal newspapers and websites have weekly, if not daily, stories on access to justice concerns. There have been several thorough reports which both detail the problems and propose possible paths forward. And one CEO of a national law firm has lamented that “access to justice is the legal profession’s equivalent of global warming.”

However, in my opinion, despite all this alarm, attention, and progress, two key components tend to be missing …

Class Warfare: The Disappearance Of Low-Income Litigants From The Civil Docket, Myriam Gilles

Articles

In recent years, much attention has been paid to the startling disparities in income and wealth in contemporary U.S. society. The enormous concentration of economic power in the top 1% is the culmination of decades of significant income and wealth gains for the top, combined with stagnant or decreasing growth for the majority - a trend that continues apace. But nowhere is the gap more glaring than in the civil docket, where class actions brought by or on behalf of low-income consumers and employees are on the verge of disappearing.

To be sure, the decline in class actions is only …

Taking Bankruptcy Rights Seriously, Rafael I. Pardo

Scholarship@WashULaw

Perhaps more so than any other area of law affecting individuals of low-to-moderate means, bankruptcy poignantly presents an affordability paradox: The system’s purpose is to relieve individuals from financial distress, yet it simultaneously demands a significant commitment of resources to obtain such relief. To date, no one has undertaken a comprehensive study of the complexities and costs of the litigation burden that Congress has imposed on self-represented debtors who seek a fresh start in bankruptcy. In order to explore the problems inherent in a system that sometimes necessitates litigation as the path for vindicating a debtor’s statutory right to a …

No Lawyer For A Hundred Miles? Mapping The New Geography Of Access Of Justice In Canada, Jamie Baxter, Albert Yoon

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Abstract

Recent concerns about the geography of access to justice in Canada have focused on the dwindling number of lawyers in rural and remote areas, raising anxieties about the profession’s inability to meet current and future demands for localized legal services. These concerns have motivated a range of policy responses that aim to improve the education, training, recruitment and retention of practitioners in underserved areas. We surveyed lawyers across Ontario to better understand their physical proximity to clients and how, if at all, that proximity promotes access to justice. We find that lawyers’ scope of practice varies based on a …

Law School Based Incubators And Access To Justice Perspectives From Deans, Patricia Salkin, Ellen Y. Suni, Niels Schaumann, Mary Lu Bilek

Faculty Works

At the end of February 2015, law professors, law deans, incubator staff and attorneys, and self-selected others gathered at California Western School of Law for the Second Annual Conference on Law School Incubators and Residency Programs. The incubators that are the subject of this article tend to focus on transition to law practice and access to justice, and some are also working to incorporate technology for the practice of law as a means of enhancing access to justice. As more law schools decide to host, sponsor or offer an incubator, and following our panel discussion at the February 2015 incubator …

Depending On The Kindness Of Strangers: Access To Civil Justice In Canada, Noel Semple

Law Publications

‘Abysmal’ was the word used to describe the accessibility of Canadian civil justice in a recent major report. Access to justice is simultaneously a social problem, a professional obligation for the legal profession, and a market opportunity for law firms. Are there any signs of significant progress on any of these fronts? This short Correspondent's report will review recent Canadian efforts to connect people of modest means with the expert legal services they urgently need.

Access To Justice: Is Legal Services Regulation Blocking The Path?, Noel Semple

Law Publications

High prices and lack of innovation have placed expert legal services beyond the reach of too many Americans and Canadians. Is legal services regulation exacerbating common law North America’s access to justice problem? Does regulatory maintenance of a unified legal profession, and insulation of that profession from non-lawyer influence, make it more difficult for people here to meet their legal needs? This article argues that, although regulatory liberalization is not a magic bullet for the accessibility of justice, there is strong evidence of a link between regulation and access. North American lawyer regulators need to understand, and work to reduce, …

The Litigation Finance Contract, Maya Steinitz

Faculty Scholarship

Litigation funding-for-profit, nonrecourse funding of a litigation by a nonparty-is a new and rapidly developing industry. It has been described as one of the "biggest and most influential trends in civil justice" today by RAND, the New York Times, and others. Despite the importance and growth of the industry, there is a complete absence of information about or discussion of litigation finance contracting, even though all the promises and pitfalls of litigation funding stem from the relationships those contracts establish and organize. Further, the literature and case law pertaining to litigation funding have evolved from an analogy between litigation funding …

Introduction: Evolving Standards In Juvenile Justice From Gault To Graham And Beyond, Mae C. Quinn

Journal Articles

This collection of articles explores the ongoing evolution of juvenile justice standards, sharing important theoretical insights about the current state of the law as well as experience-based lessons from committed juvenile practitioners who confront important youth justice issues in our communities and courts. It is being published in conjunction with Washington University‘s 12th annual Access to Equal Justice Colloquium, which this year sought to bring together stakeholders from the national, state, and local levels to share and build juvenile justice expertise during a day-long conference.2 Our goal was to consider where we have been, where we are now, and where …

Access To Justice And The Ethics And Politics Of Alternative Business Structures, Richard Devlin, Ora Morison

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Despite ongoing concern about access to justice in Canada, the problem persists. Meanwhile, the basic model for legal practice in Canada is the same as when the profession first emerged centuries ago in England. Only lawyers can own and control legal practices. This is not the case in other common law jurisdictions where rules have evolved to allow nonlawyers to own the companies that provide legal services. Based on a comparative analysis of the development of these alternative business structures (ABSs) in Australia and the United Kingdom, and the nondevelopment of ABSs in the United States, the authors argue that …

Ontario’S Administrative Tribunal Clusters: A Glass Half-Full Or Half-Empty For Administrative Justice?, Lorne Sossin, Jamie Baxter

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Claimants who come to administrative tribunals in Canada, as elsewhere, expecting a convenient forum to resolve their problems may discover that institutional resources and expertise, their own knowledge of the system, and their statutory entitlements and legal rights are fragmented between agencies with diverse norms and mandates. The provincial government of Ontario in Canada has recently enacted a novel strategy called tribunal clustering to confront these challenges. This paper explores the structure and rationales behind Ontario’s new tribunal clusters and compares these with reform models in Australia and the United Kingdom. The authors argue that tribunal clusters offer a flexible …

Human Rights In The United States: Legal Aid Alleges That Denying Access To Migrant Labor Camps Is A Violation Of The Human Right To Access Justice, Reena Shah, Lauren Bartlett

All Faculty Scholarship

It is estimated that there are more than 86 million migrant workers worldwide, the vast majority of whom suffer poor living and working conditions. In the United States, more than 3 million migrant farmworkers, including at least 100,000 children, are estimated to labor in fields every year, many of whom lack access to justice, earn sub-living wages, and exist in dehumanizing circumstances. Farmworkers are among the most exploited and vulnerable populations in the United States; yet, distressingly, they are also the least protected by U.S. law and law enforcement.

Legal aid advocates in the United States attempt to raise awareness …

Accessing Justice: The Available And Adequacy Of Counsel In Removal Proceedings, Peter Markowitz, Jojo Annobil, Stacy Caplow, Peter V.Z. Cobb, Nancy Morawetz, Oren Root, Claudia Slovinsky, Zhifen Cheng, Lindsay C. Nash

Articles

The immigrant representation crisis is a crisis of both quality and quantity. It is the acute shortage of competent attorneys willing and able to competently represent individuals in immigration removal proceedings. Removal proceedings are the primary mechanism by which the federal government can seek to effect the removal, or deportation, of a noncitizen. The individuals who face removal proceedings might be: the long-term lawful permanent resident (green card holder) who entered the country lawfully as a child and has lived in the United States for decades; or the refugee who has come to the United States fleeing persecution; or the …

A Right To Legal Aid: The Aba Model Access Act In International Perspective, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

For over two centuries America has failed to fulfill its revolutionary ideals of bringing equal justice to all. In August 2010 the American Bar Association moved to bring the nation closer to its ideals when it proposed the ABA Model Access Act. The Act would do what the Supreme Court of the United States has refused to do: it would recognize that legal aid in civil litigation is a matter of right and not of charity. The Act is a framework law and leaves many details to be filled in by enacting bodies and by the institutions eventually charged with …

Forum Non Conveniens And Enforcement Of Foreign Judgments, Christopher A. Whytock, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

When citizens of Ecuador sued Texaco, Inc. in a U.S. court seeking damages for oil contamination in the Amazon, Texaco successfully moved to dismiss the suit in favor of Ecuador based on the forum non conveniens doctrine, arguing – as that doctrine requires – that Ecuador was an adequate alternative forum and more appropriate than the United States for hearing the suit. The plaintiffs then refiled the suit in Ecuador, and a court there entered a multi-billion dollar judgment against Chevron Corporation, which had merged with Texaco. Chevron now argues that the Ecuadorian legal system suffers from deficiencies that should …

Iqbal And The Slide Toward Restrictive Procedure, A. Benjamin Spencer

Scholarly Articles

Last term, in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the Supreme Court affirmed its commitment to more stringent pleading standards in the ordinary federal civil case. Although the decision is not a watershed, since it merely underscores the substantial changes to pleading doctrine wrought in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, Iqbal is disconcerting for at least two reasons. First, the Court treated Iqbal’s factual allegations in a manner that further erodes the assumption-of-truth rule that has been the cornerstone of modern federal civil pleading practice. The result is an approach to pleading that is governed by a subjective, malleable standard that permits judges …