IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/oxjlsj/v42y2022i1p325-344..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Price Are We Willing to Pay for the Dream of Equal Justice?†

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Higgins

Abstract

The injustices wrought by unequal access to the legal system pose a direct threat to the rule of law, yet such injustices are widespread in England and elsewhere. Lawyers regularly criticise governments for a lack of funding for the legal system, but the private market for delivering legal services receives much less scrutiny. A private market for legal resources is antithetical to equal justice because it makes the outcome of cases turn on arbitrary factors such as wealth. The solution, according to Wilmot-Smith in his book Equal Justice, is to socialise the allocation of legal services so that the rich cannot buy the best lawyers, and to prevent them from contracting out of this public system by making private arbitrations unenforceable. This review article argues that Wilmot-Smith’s thesis is persuasive, but there might also be second-best solutions that could deliver greater legal equality at lower cost.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Higgins, 2022. "What Price Are We Willing to Pay for the Dream of Equal Justice?†," Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 42(1), pages 325-344.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:oxjlsj:v:42:y:2022:i:1:p:325-344.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ojls/gqab002
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:oxjlsj:v:42:y:2022:i:1:p:325-344.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/ojls .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.