scholarly journals Social Justice as an Essentially Contested Concept

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 537-547
Author(s):  
Richard K. Greenstein
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Essentially Contested Concepts ◽  
Essentially Contested Concept

In the current hyper-partisan environment, it is tempting to treat those who disagree on social, political, and even legal issues with disdain—as willfully ignorant or irrational or profoundly mistaken or even evil. This is surely true with respect to debates on issues regarding access to justice. Besides courtesy, there is an important philosophical reason for avoiding this attitude and treating opponents in our arguments about access to justice with respect: W.B. Gallie’s idea of “essentially contested concepts,” which, as Gallie describes it, includes social justice. My goal in this essay is to illustrate how understanding social justice as an essentially contested concept helps us see more clearly what is at stake when we debate issues pertaining to access to justice.

scholarly journals "Our roots began in (South) Africa": Modelling law clinics to maximise social justice ends

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 88
Author(s):  
Donald Nicolson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Service ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
Existing Problems ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

<p align="JUSTIFY">This article explores the ways in which law clinics can be organised to maximise their impact on social justice in South Africa. Such impact can be both direct in the form of the actual legal services offered to those in need or indirect in the form of encouraging law clinic students to commit to assisting those most in need of legal service after they graduate either through career choice or other forms of assistance. The article develops a decision-making matrix for clinic design around two dimensions, each with a number of variables. The first, "organizational" dimension relates to the way clinics are organised and run, and involves choices about whether: (1) clinics emphasise social justice or student learning; (2) student participation attracts academic credit or is extra-curricular; (3) participation is compulsory or optional; (4) clinics are managed and run by staff or students; and (5) there is one "omnibus" clinic structure covering all clinic activities or a "cluster" of discrete clinics conducting different activities. The second, "activities" dimensions involves choices about whether services are: (1) specialist or generalist; (2) exclusively legal or "<span lang="IT">holistic</span><span lang="EN">"; (3) provided only by students or qualified legal professionals; (4) located in community neighbourhoods or on campus; (5) provided by students working "in-house" in a university clinic or in external placements; (6) designed to benefit the wider community rather than just the individuals directly served; and (7) designed to remedy existing problems or educate the public on their legal rights and duties. </span></p><p align="JUSTIFY">While not intending to set out a blueprint for existing law clinics, the article argues that, if South African are motivated to enhance their impact on social justice and level of community engagement, they can learn much from the first law clinic to be established in South Africa, at the University of Cape Town, which was entirely student-run, optional and solely focused on ensuring access to justice rather than educating students. Drawing on his experience in adapting this model for use in Scotland, the author looks at the advantages of combining the volunteerist and student owned nature of this clinic with some formal teaching and staff involvement to maximize both the direct and indirect impact of clinics on social justice.</p>

scholarly journals Riding Circuit: Bringing the Law to Those Who Need It

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Drisko Zago
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Early Treatment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Working Poor ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Court System ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Societal Problems

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 law librarians, working with a network of public librarians, can make a significant impact into the everyday lives of the working poor and folk of modest means in underserved areas.

‘Framing figures’ and the campaign for sex purchase criminalisation in Ireland: A Lakoffian analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-332
Author(s):  
Eilís Ward
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Red Light ◽  
The State ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Sexual Offences ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
The Status ◽  
Recent Reform

If the concept of social justice posits equality and fairness between subjects in the social order, then the presence of those subjects within that order must first and foremost be acknowledged. In Ireland’s recent reform of prostitution law contained in the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017, the presence of the sex worker as a rights-bearing subject or citizen, with access to justice in that capacity, was denied. In this article I focus on the use of data by the neo-abolitionist ‘Turn off the Red Light’ campaign to ‘flatten out’ the complexity of sex workers lives and present the figure of the ‘vulnerable prostituted woman’ and the ‘trafficking victim’: tragic, abject, a necessarily violated person and in need of ‘protection’ from the state. I argue that this data, entering public and political discourse as uncontestable truth, constituted what I call, ‘framing figures’, framing an inevitable outcome and precluding certain subjects from the status of equality and fairness. The data allowed campaigners for the Sex Purchase Ban (SPB), and, in turn the state, to eclipse a social justice approach to sex work, such as proposed by the Sex Workers Alliance of Ireland and other actors.

scholarly journals Juridical Analysis of Legal Aid Implementation for Underprivileged Communities: Problems and Challenges

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-498
Author(s):  
Alycia Sandra Dinar Andhini
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Assistance ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Law ◽  
Gain Access

Legal Aid is organized to help resolve legal issues faced by Legal Aid Recipients. The birth of Law No. 16 of 2011 concerning Legal Aid provides new hope for the poor to gain access to justice and equality before the law. This writing aims to determine the implementation of the provision of legal aid and the obstacles that influence it in its implementation because sometimes the implementation of Law Number 16 of 2011 concerning Legal Aid in Indonesian Courts is not optimal. This research focuses on the application of legal aid to the poor, the challenges and problems they face. The method used in this research is empirical research. This study found that in the application of legal aid in several regions in Indonesia, the main problem faced in addition to the lack of availability of accredited legal aid institutions, was also the issue of the budget provided by the state. In addition, in terms of the legal culture of the community, the implementation of legal aid is not optimal due to the understanding of the community not to have anything to do with the law so that many cases that should receive legal assistance cannot be accompanied.  

scholarly journals PERANAN MAHASISWA FAKULTAS HUKUM SEBAGAI PELAKSANA BANTUAN HUKUM (LEGAL AID) KEPADA MASYARAKAT

FIAT JUSTISIA ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Deni Achmad
Keyword(s):  
Legal Issues ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Wide Area ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Dense Population ◽  
The Law

The role of law students in the implementation of legal aid is divided into two, namely the implementation of legal aid litigation and non-litigation legal aid. The role of students in the provision of legal aid services, urgent existence, considering many people who are not capable of, marginalized and legally blind in Indonesia is difficult to get access to justice, especially a dense population and spread across a wide area so it is not proportional to the number Advocates are available and include high student awareness of the legal issues faced by the community/communities are not able to. Students have contributed significantly in their communities by providing legal aid services, running the advocacy work and organizing in their communities in order to encourage growth is growing awareness of the laws of society and realize access to justice (acces to justice) for everyone, especially people not being able to obtain a guarantee in the fulfillment of their rights as citizens, especially equality before the law (equality before the law) as mandated by the constitution in Article 28D paragraph (1) and Article 28H paragraph (2) of the constitution of 1945 .Keywords: Student, Legal Aid, Role

scholarly journals Interface of Law and Medicine in Clinical Legal Education: Success story of the Women’s Law Clinic in improving the health of women and ensuring women’s access to Justice in Nigeria

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevwe Omoragbon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Success Story ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The Social

<p>Specialist law clinics now operate both in the developed and developing world. The historical background of these specialist law clinics can be traced to the United States. They also abound in South Africa, Europe and are fast emerging in several African countries. It is however outside the scope of this paper to describe the wide variety of specialist law clinic models that exist in other countries.</p><p><br />At present in Nigeria, there are seven Nigerian Universities with law clinics. These law clinics in enhancing the social justice frontier have developed projects addressing specific problems; making them specialists in service delivery, but the Women’s Law Clinic, is the only gender specialist law clinic.</p>

scholarly journals Digital Technologies for Sustainable Development: Legal Challenges. Conference Review

2021 ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Valeriia Ermolaeva
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Business Law ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
Conference Review

This is a conference review of Digital Law Conference dedicated to the legal challenges of digital technologies for sustainable development. It was held at the Department of Business Law of Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russia, Moscow, November 26, 2020). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) officially known as Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development are 17 goals for international cooperation recognized by the UN. The purpose of this conference was to share, learn, and discuss main approaches to legal regulation of &quot;end-to-end&quot; digital technologies in Russia and elsewhere in the world, taking into account that implementation of the leading technologies should contribute to achieving SDGs. There has been considered the legal issues of the application of various digital technologies through the prism of achieving SDGs: the promotion of sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth and digital technologies; the legal aspects of democratization of access to financial markets and tokenization of economy; the legal issues of implementation of the Internet of Things; the legal support for sustainable industrialization and innovation using Artificial Intelligence and other digital technologies; the use of digital technologies to promote an open society for sustainable development, access to justice for everybody, and so on. The contribution of digital technologies for sustainable development was well-illustrated, and many actionable solutions were proposed.

scholarly journals Essentially Contested Concepts and Semantic Externalism

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon J. Evnine
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kind ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Temporal Part ◽  
Semantic Externalism ◽  
Natural Kind Terms ◽  
Kind Terms ◽  
Essentially Contested Concepts ◽  
Historical Tradition ◽  
Essentially Contested Concept

Abstract In 1956, W.B. Gallie introduced his idea of essentially contested concepts. In my paper, I offer a novel interpretation of his theory and argue that his theory, thus interpreted, is correct. The key to my interpretation lies in a condition Gallie places on essentially contested concepts that other interpreters downplay or dismiss: that the use of an essentially contested concept must be derived “from an original exemplar whose authority is acknowledged by all the contestant users of the concept.” This reveals a similarity between Gallie’s views and the semantic externalist views of Hilary Putnam, and others, about natural kind terms like “water” and “tiger.” I argue that natural kind terms and terms for essentially contested concepts are two species of a single semantic genus. In the case of natural kind terms, a term refers to a natural kind, the exemplars are instances of that kind, and the relation between the exemplars and anything to which the term applies is co-membership of the kind. In the case of terms for essentially contested concepts, a term refers to an historical tradition, the exemplar is a stage or temporal part of that tradition, and the relation between the exemplar and anything to which the term refers is being the heir of. This allows me to understand the contests that alerted Gallie to the phenomenon of essentially contested concepts as contests over the ownership of historical traditions.

scholarly journals O direito de acesso à justiça efetiva e em tempo razoável e o pacto de San José da Costa Rica na proteção do direito à saúde

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-100
Author(s):  
Juliane Caravieri Martins ◽  
◽  
Igor Vinícius de Lima Afonso ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Costa Rica ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
San Jose ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
The Right ◽  
Judicial Protection ◽  
Right Of Access

This research examines the right of access to justice – fair, effective and timely judicial protection – from the perspective of the American Convention on Human Rights, also known as the Pact of San José of Costa Rica, and Brazilian constitutional norms, verifying wether they protected the right to health in order to realize social justice. Furthermore, this study questiones whether this Pact contributed to the protection of the right to health for Brazilians. In other words, this paper investigates if this international treaty contributed to the promotion of the right to health in Brazil by allowing citizens, through the phenomenon of judicialization of public policies, access to fairer and more effective judicial protection.

scholarly journals Towards Designing a Validated Framework for Improved Clinical Legal Education: Empirical Research on Student and Alumni Feedback

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Stephan Van der Merwe
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Student Evaluation ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The Body ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Implementation Framework ◽  
The University

The pedagogical advantages of employing a Clinical Legal Education (“CLE”) teaching and learning strategy have been acclaimed in literature for almost a century and it continues to be ideally suited to cater to modern education expectations. As an agent for social change, CLE offers law students an effective gateway to participate in, and be influenced by, fundamental social justice problems while it also improves access to justice for the indigent. Though the clinical literature is replete on expected benefits for clinical law students, very little (if any) verifiable empirical research, independently sourced and evaluated, has been published to assess the veracity of these claims in support of CLE. After receiving a funding grant from the University of Stellenbosch Fund for Innovation and Research into Learning and Teaching, the University of Stellenbosch Law Clinic appointed an independent, external agency to conduct empirical research through an extensive measure and evaluation exercise. The aim of the project was to source, document and analyse robust empirical research data about the Faculty of Law’s CLE module, Practical Legal Training 471. The project involved the sourcing and collation of formal student evaluation feedback reports spanning a period of nine years. Additional alumni and current student data were gathered either by online questionnaire or by telephonic interview. The research was aimed at eliciting quantitative as well as qualitative responses. The purpose of this article is to describe the applicable methodology and aims of the research project, to unpack and discuss the resulting empirical data, and to draw certain conclusions based on the findings of this research about CLE’s impact on law students’ experience specifically relating to their practice-readiness and social justice sensitivities. It is suggested that this research will prove both interesting and useful to law teachers involved in relevant programmes at other higher education institutions. The data and evidence detailed herein will assist them to conduct their research and to make substantiated recommendations for the development of CLE programs on a broader national and international level. This research will also add to the body of knowledge on students and student learning and allow for recommendations regarding the creation of a broader implementation framework for improved CLE.

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