Project MUSE®: Canadian Journal of Law and Society - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/356
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Canadian Journal of Law and Society.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 20 (2005) through current issueLatest Articles: Canadian Journal of Law and SocietyTWOProject MUSE®Canadian Journal of Law and Society1911-02270829-3201Latest articles in Canadian Journal of Law and Society. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Who Are the People in "People-Centred Justice"? An Examination through a New Zealand Lens
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959935
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Who are the people in people-centred justice? That might seem like an obtuse question. The well-understood intention of the phrase is to move the focus from lawyers, courts, and other institutions to the public and their needs. I am a supporter of this idea and its aims, and welcome a change from the focus on lawyers and courts to a more expansive and user-focused idea of access to justice. But, as I have watched the implementation of people-centred justice in my home country of New Zealand, I have also begun to question its utility as a guiding principle for justice reform. It is very attractive, for who can really object to people-centred justice? But part of its attraction is its sheer elasticity—its protean
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/356/image/coversmallWho Are the People in "People-Centred Justice"? An Examination through a New Zealand Lens2025-05-14text/htmlen-USWho Are the People in "People-Centred Justice"? An Examination through a New Zealand Lens2025-05-142025TWOProject MUSE®1028222026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-05-14Welfarism and Person-Centred Justice
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959936
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Person-centred justice offers a fresh and compelling way to think about justice systems. The international and comparative perspective on access to justice offered by the OECD's Framework and Good Practice Principles for Person-Centred Justice is especially helpful, given the predominantly domestic focus of the scholarship in Canada and some other countries. This short paper seeks to trace connections between person-centred justice and welfarism. Welfarism is a normative theory of public policy—an account of what government should do in the justice sector or in any other sector. The central claim of welfarism is that government should always try to make individuals' lives go better, for them, than they otherwise
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/356/image/coversmallWelfarism and Person-Centred Justice2025-05-14text/htmlen-USWelfarism and Person-Centred Justice2025-05-142025TWOProject MUSE®1253572026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-05-14Using Social Media as a Tool to Inform Person-Centred Justice
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959937
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Within the Canadian legal community, there is a growing recognition that access-to-civil-justice initiatives must refocus its attention away from designs that primarily benefit those working within the system—namely judges, clerks, and lawyers—and place the needs of the public first through a person-centred perspective (see e.g., Macfarlane 2013). A person-centred perspective, however, could mean one of two things: first, it may mean that the formal justice system should become more user-friendly and responsive to the needs of the public; alternatively, it could mean that public conceptions of fairness and justice, as evidenced by their lived experiences of legal problems, should be included in programme and policy
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/356/image/coversmallUsing Social Media as a Tool to Inform Person-Centred Justice2025-05-14text/htmlen-USUsing Social Media as a Tool to Inform Person-Centred Justice2025-05-142025TWOProject MUSE®1060742026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-05-14Court Form Accessibility: Adopting, Designing and Evaluating Online Guided Pathways
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959938
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Court forms are a notorious access-to-justice "hot spot." Self-represented litigants (SRLs) have repeatedly identified overly complex court forms as a major source of confusion and frustration. Digital Guided Pathways have been identified as one possible means to reduce the barriers that the public experiences with court forms—but how effective are Guided Pathways as access-to-justice measures? Do they, in fact, make court forms easier to fill out? If so, how can they be optimally designed and evaluated? This article reports on research seeking to answer these questions through conducting a case study of Family Law Guided Pathways developed by Community Legal Education Ontario (CLEO). Our study yielded two major
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/356/image/coversmallCourt Form Accessibility: Adopting, Designing and Evaluating Online Guided Pathways2025-05-14text/htmlen-USCourt Form Accessibility: Adopting, Designing and Evaluating Online Guided Pathways2025-05-142025TWOProject MUSE®1148022026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-05-14Towards People-Centered Justice: The Conflict Resolution Routes of People Facing Legal Problems
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959939
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Improving access to justice continues to be a key priority for the justice sector. Access to justice is recognized not just as a fundamental right, but also as a basic human need that is crucial to our democracy and the rule of law. Recently, there has been a greater focus on ensuring that efforts to strengthen access to justice are "people-centered." This concept implies that those impacted by justiciable issues should be placed at the core of access-to-justice work (OECD 2023).A commitment to people-centered justice also requires acknowledging the unique situations of specific communities who may be vulnerable and underserved by traditional justice systems. For the purposes of this paper, vulnerability is defined
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/356/image/coversmallTowards People-Centered Justice: The Conflict Resolution Routes of People Facing Legal Problems2025-05-14text/htmlen-USTowards People-Centered Justice: The Conflict Resolution Routes of People Facing Legal Problems2025-05-142025TWOProject MUSE®1107432026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-05-14Reducing the "Justice Gap" Through Data for Systemic Change: Using Multiple-Perspective Legal-Needs Surveys to Improve Person-Centered Justice
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959940
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"The best ideas emerge when different perspectives meet" (Frans Johansson)In Canada, there is a need to enhance the evidentiary base for access-to-justice (A2J) issues, especially considering that current practices for collecting and analyzing justice data have been deficient. This poses a significant problem, as deficits in justice data impede the measurement and advancement of initiatives that could provide solutions to A2J issues. For instance, the Canadian Bar Association has highlighted the challenge between inadequate data and moving the dial on A2J issues, stating: "we are unable to give definitive answers to even the most basic inquiries about barriers to [accessing justice] and we lack the capacity to pull
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/356/image/coversmallReducing the "Justice Gap" Through Data for Systemic Change: Using Multiple-Perspective Legal-Needs Surveys to Improve Person-Centered Justice2025-05-14text/htmlen-USReducing the "Justice Gap" Through Data for Systemic Change: Using Multiple-Perspective Legal-Needs Surveys to Improve Person-Centered Justice2025-05-142025TWOProject MUSE®948192026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-05-14A School for Self-Represented Litigants: A People-Centred Approach to Access to Justice in Family Law
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959941
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In recent years, many jurisdictions have seen an increase in self-represented litigants (SRLs).1 This increase has permeated family law courts in both large urban centres as well as small rural areas. It is also clear that SRLs disproportionately suffer more negative outcomes in their cases than represented parties.2 Therefore, the question is no longer whether the rise in SRLs is an issue, but rather what the responses are and should be to this phenomenon. Like many other narrower facets of the broader issue of access to justice, the solutions in the particular context of family law must be varied and tailored to the actual needs of those representing themselves in family law courts. This requires understanding
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/356/image/coversmallA School for Self-Represented Litigants: A People-Centred Approach to Access to Justice in Family Law2025-05-14text/htmlen-USA School for Self-Represented Litigants: A People-Centred Approach to Access to Justice in Family Law2025-05-142025TWOProject MUSE®987732026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-05-14People-Centered Justice in International Assistance: Rule-of-Law Path Dependencies or New Paths to Justice for All?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959942
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The commitment under Goal 16 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to provide access to justice for all has marked a watershed for international justice support as the first-ever global commitment to universal access to justice.1 The inclusion of SDG16 in the 2030 Agenda, and the later addition of an indicator on civil and administrative justice, marked the successful culmination of years of advocacy by coalitions of civil society and government groups.2 Its adoption in 2015 sparked a wave of efforts to better understand challenges in ensuring justice for all, including by collecting and compiling new data on people's justice problems, their impacts, and interconnectedness, and work on costing and financing
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/356/image/coversmallPeople-Centered Justice in International Assistance: Rule-of-Law Path Dependencies or New Paths to Justice for All?2025-05-14text/htmlen-USPeople-Centered Justice in International Assistance: Rule-of-Law Path Dependencies or New Paths to Justice for All?2025-05-142025TWOProject MUSE®1402262026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-05-14The Chambers List Is Long Today and Every Day: A Qualitative Exploration of the Potentiality of Person-Centred Justice in Vancouver's Supreme Court of British Columbia
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959943
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We know that prior institutional reforms of superior trial courts1 have failed to meaningfully move the needle on access to civil justice and that efforts to narrow the civil justice gap have been elusive. While person-centred justice has been identified as a promising new paradigm for improving access to justice by focusing on the engagement and needs of those navigating legal disputes, key questions about the implementation of a person-centred vision in traditional, formalistic legal venues such as superior civil courts remain unanswered. Through qualitative exploration of institutional practices in the civil chambers courts of the Vancouver Supreme Court—British Columbia's busiest superior civil trial court—this
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/356/image/coversmallThe Chambers List Is Long Today and Every Day: A Qualitative Exploration of the Potentiality of Person-Centred Justice in Vancouver's Supreme Court of British Columbia2025-05-14text/htmlen-USThe Chambers List Is Long Today and Every Day: A Qualitative Exploration of the Potentiality of Person-Centred Justice in Vancouver's Supreme Court of British Columbia2025-05-142025TWOProject MUSE®1274142026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-05-14Justice centrée sur la personne et règlement des différends : / Person-Centred Justice and Dispute Resolution: Le potentiel des tribunaux non professionnels / The Potential of Lay Courts
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959944
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Dans son acception la plus simple, le concept de justice centrée sur la personne signifie tout simplement que la justice devrait être centrée sur la personne. Mais au-delà de cette tautologie, les contours précis du concept demeurent incertains, tout comme ses ramifications. Plusieurs questions normatives et pratiques se posent. Sur le plan normatif, la justice centrée sur la personne devrait-elle être le seul principe, ou même le principe cardinal, guidant les réformes de la justice? Sur le plan pratique, comment un service ou une institution peut-il être « centré », concrètement, sur la personne? Et sur ces deux fronts – normatif et pratique – la justice centrée sur la personne devrait-elle s'appliquer
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/356/image/coversmallJustice centrée sur la personne et règlement des différends : / Person-Centred Justice and Dispute Resolution: Le potentiel des tribunaux non professionnels / The Potential of Lay Courts2025-05-14text/htmlen-USJustice centrée sur la personne et règlement des différends : / Person-Centred Justice and Dispute Resolution: Le potentiel des tribunaux non professionnels / The Potential of Lay Courts2025-05-142025TWOProject MUSE®2921892026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-05-14Special Issue 39-3: Person-Centred Justice: Reimagining Law, Institutions, and Process: Introduction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/959945
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It has been more than a decade since the publication of three major reports on access to justice in Canada. These reports, namely Access to Civil and Family Justice: A Roadmap for Change1 by the Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters, Reaching Equal Justice: An Invitation to Envision and Act2 by the Canadian Bar Association, and the final report of the National Self-Represented Litigants Project,3 spurred considerable discussion, research, and action to understand and improve the state of access to justice in Canada. Importantly, all called for some variation on making the justice system "user-centered,"4 "people-centered,"5 or "user-friendly."6In the years since their publication, this
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/356/image/coversmallSpecial Issue 39-3: Person-Centred Justice: Reimagining Law, Institutions, and Process: Introduction2025-05-14text/htmlen-USSpecial Issue 39-3: Person-Centred Justice: Reimagining Law, Institutions, and Process: Introduction2025-05-142025TWOProject MUSE®903792026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-05-14