ABSTRACT
There is a detailed history of the term ‘access to justice’.Wewill define it as ‘equality of access to law and legal services’.1 In order to analyse the term, we will make use of the analytical distinction between formal and economic access. It is worth remembering that the range of the term extends far beyond its use in the government White Paper, Modernising Justice, or Lord Woolf’s report into civil justice. Indeed, the concept of access to justice has to be seen as contested and open to political debate. This is why we will be examining ideas of access that come from sources that are often distinct from, and even in opposition to, the ideology of the present government’s reforms.
