Access to Civil Justice; June 2019 in Chicago, IL

American Bar Foundation, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

Title: Access to Civil Justice: Integrating and Advancing Theory and Practice Abstract: Every year, over 100 million Americans will confront a civil justice problem. These civil justice problems have broad impacts on those affected, including (among others) their livelihood, the security of their shelter, their ability to work, their access to health care, their chances to participate in the rearing of their children, and care for dependent adults in their lives. Many of these legal problems go unresolved, and others are resolved unfairly. Achieving meaningful access to justice for Americans requires an empirically-grounded and evidence-based understanding of what is currently happening with the public?s access to justice, as well as which concrete proposals for increasing access to justice are likely to be efficacious, scalable, and sustainable. This project will consist of a census-style survey of academic disciplines engaged in access to justice scholarship and an intensive workshop. It is designed to build a research field and an evidence base by identifying emerging access to justice researchers, coordinating collaboration across academic disciplines, and producing a research agenda and original scholarship to give access to justice research the vigor and definition of a field. The approach advances access to justice scholarship by identifying new questions for the field and supporting the development of research projects by promising early-career scholars working in the interdisciplinary area of access to justice. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.