Identifying the Stateless in the United Kingdom • 451 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 See eg Roderick A Macdonald, ‘Access to Justice in Canada Today: Scope, Scale and Ambitions’ in Julia Bass, WA Bogart, and Frederick H Zemans (eds), Access to Justice for a New Century: The Way Forward (Law Society of Upper Canada 2005) 19; Theresa Marchiori, ‘A Framework for Measuring Access to Justice Including Specific Challenges Facing Women’ (UN Women and Council of Europe 2015); OECD (n 55) 11; Ashley Terlouw, ‘Access to Justice for Asylum Seekers: Is the Right to Seek and Enjoy Asylum Only Black Letter Law?’ in Carolus Grütters, Sandra Mantu, and Paul Minderhoud (eds), Migration on the Move: Essays on the Dynamics of Migration (Brill Nijhoff 2017). Mauro Cappelletti and Bryant G Garth, ‘Access to Justice: The Newest Wave in the Worldwide Movement to Make Rights Effective’ (1978) 27 Buffalo Law Review 181, 182. UNDP, Programming for Justice: Access for All – A Practitioner’s Guide to a Human Rights-Based Approach to Access to Justice (2005) 5. Macdonald (n 57) 23. See also Lord Woolf, Access to Justice: Final Report to the Lord Chancellor on the Civil Justice System in England and Wales (HMSO 1996); Marchiori (n 57); Terlouw (n 57). Macdonald (n 57) 24. Thomas Burke, Lawyers, Lawsuits, and Legal Rights: Litigation in American Society (University of California Press 2002); Christine Coumarelos, Zhigang Wei, and Albert Z Zhou, Justice Made to Measure: NSW Legal Needs Survey in Disadvantaged Areas (Law and Justice Foundation of NSW 2006); Alan Uzelac and CH Van Rhee (eds), Access to Justice and the Judiciary: Towards New European Standards of Affordability, Quality and Efficiency of Civil Adjudication (Intersentia 2009). Robert A Baruch Bush, ‘Defining Quality Dispute Resolution: Taxonomies and Anti-Taxonomies of Quality Arguments’ (1989) 66 Denver University Law Review 335; Tom R Tyler, ‘The Quality of Dispute Resolution. Procedures and Outcomes: Measurement Problems and Possibilities (1989) 66 Denver University Law Review 419. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijrl/article/32/3/440/6065591 by guest on 04 July 2025 mainstream population.57 The term ‘access to justice’ is difficult to define, as Cappelletti and Garth have acknowledged, but it serves ‘to focus on two basic purposes of the legal system – the system by which people may vindicate their rights and/or resolve their disputes under the general auspices of the state. First, the system must be equally accessible to all; second, it must lead to results that are individually and socially just’.58 The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) describes it more broadly as ‘the ability of people to seek and obtain a remedy through formal or informal institutions of justice, and in conformity with human rights standards’.59 Contemporary commentators identify several ‘features that would characterize an accessible justice system: (1) just results, (2) fair treatment, (3) reasonable cost, (4) reasonable speed, (5) understandable to users, (6) responsive to needs, (7) certain, and (8) effective, adequately resourced, and well organized’.60 Macdonald has pointed out that these elements must be understood within a multidimensional strategy because ‘access to justice is a multi-faceted phenomenon’.61 Diversity in approaches to access to justice is indispensable – as practice has shown – for the simple reason that legal needs are as diverse as the situations in which individuals find themselves. As a consequence, the issues that fall within the scope of an access to justice agenda include, among others, access to legal advice, usability and fairness of procedures, and accommodation of diversity. Nevertheless, the supply side (courts and lawyers) of access to justice research continues to focus principally on procedures and complaint mechanisms, since projects currently being funded mainly address issues relevant to institutional players. In addition, empirical research in this area is more generally focused on the characteristics of an accessible dispute resolution system than those of an accessible justice system62 and is not concerned with investigating the quality of the outcomes that are produced.63