The View From Here: Access to Justice and Community Legal Clinics

(2012) University of New Brunswick LJ 427

9 Pages Posted: 6 Jun 2012

See all articles by Sarah M. Buhler

Sarah M. Buhler

University of Saskatchewan - College of Law

Date Written: January 1, 2012

Abstract

Community legal clinics offer important perspectives on access to justice because of their proximity to, and relationships with, the people and communities who are so often the subject of the debate. In this article, I focus on three broad and interrelated insights about access to justice that I have gained as a result of my work at Community Legal Assistance Services for Saskatoon Inner City (CLASSIC), and through my reading of the “community lawyering” scholarship. First, from a community legal clinic perspective, access to justice cannot be understood “out of context”. That is, close attention to historical, economic, political, and social context is a crucial part of grappling with the problem of access to justice. Second, a community legal clinic perspective reveals that an engaged consideration of “community” is foundational to any conception of access to justice. Third, the struggle for access to justice demands “long-haul” commitment by advocates at community legal clinics. Overall, these insights reveal the problem of access to justice as only one thread in a complicated web of social injustice, impossible to untangle without addressing the larger web. These insights also tend to unsettle dominant visions of access to justice, which often focus on access to formal dispute resolution institutions and to disassociate access to justice from other social, economic and political problems. Ultimately, these insights have implications for the ways in which lawyers working in the community understand their place in broader struggles for justice.

Suggested Citation

Buhler, Sarah M., The View From Here: Access to Justice and Community Legal Clinics (January 1, 2012). (2012) University of New Brunswick LJ 427, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2078544

Sarah M. Buhler (Contact Author)

University of Saskatchewan - College of Law ( email )

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Canada

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