Safeguarding Access to Justice in the Age of the Online Court

In 2016 Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service embarked on a significant modernisation programme with a view to developing online courts. In pursuit of this ambition the Courts and Tribunals (Online Procedure) Bill seeks to introduce new procedural rules to govern the online jurisdiction, giving the Lord Chancellor and an Online Procedure Rule Committee the power to mandate which proceedings will be conducted online and what assistance will be provided to users. In this study we analyse survey data and case decisions to highlight the importance of channel plurality and digital support in light of the shift to online courts. Our findings identify the groups most at risk of digital exclusion, and the expectations the judiciary sets in relation to internet access, capability, and the design of online systems. We conclude by detailing what our findings mean for safeguarding access to justice in the digital age.     

Wrong about Rights: Public Knowledge of Key Areas of Consumer,Housing and Employment Law in England and Wales

Over many decades, processes of juridification have brought about huge growth in legal rights, responsibilities and protections, yet citizens appear to poorly understand this ‘law thick’ world. This impacts citizens’ capacity to ‘name, blame and claim’ in the legal domain at a time of retreat from public funding of civil legal services. This article examines public knowledge of rights in key areas relating to consumer, housing and employment law. Drawing on data from the 2010–2012 English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey, the article uses responses to a series of hypothetical scenarios to explore public knowledge of rights and characteristics associated with knowledge. Our findings highlight a substantial deficit in individuals’ understanding of legal rights and responsibilities – even among those for whom particular rights and responsibilities have specific bearing. We also consider what these findings mean for public legal education and the efficiency, efficacy and legitimacy of the law.     

When legal rights are not a reality: do individuals know their rights and how can we tell?

Public knowledge of rights has been the subject of a number of empirical enquiries over the last decade. In England and Wales, knowledge of rights and its relationship with an individual's capacity to ‘self-help’ and ‘self-represent’ when faced with a civil justice problem has become the subject of renewed attention following changes to legal aid which, from March 2013, will see the availability of legal advice and representation dramatically reduced. Previous studies focusing on public knowledge of rights in this (and other) jurisdictions have illustrated a lack of knowledge amongst the general population and more specifically, a widespread tendency of individuals to assume that the law aligns with their own moral, ethical or social attitudes. However, many of these studies have also suffered from methodological shortcomings. In attempting to address some of these shortcomings this study uses an open-ended format to ask individuals with one or one or more civil or social justice problems to describe their rights/legal position. We find that whilst an open-ended question approach to exploring knowledge of rights yields insight not acquired by other formats, its utility is constrained by difficulty reconciling articulation and actual knowledge of rights. We discuss the implications of these findings as they relate to the development of future research in the field of family and social welfare law, Public Legal Education (PLE) and access to justice post-March 2013.     

ADHD and criminality: A primer on the genetic, neurobiological, evolutionary, and treatment literature for criminologists

Objective

This state of the art review of 102 studies is a primer on ADHD and its major comorbidities for criminologists unfamiliar with the genetic, neurobiological, and evolutionary literatures.

Materials and methods

Neurological, genetic, medical, and criminal justice data bases were keyword searched for articles on ADHD and/or articles using ADHD as a major independent variable.

Results

ADHD is a disorder that is closely connected to externalizing behaviors, conduct problems, and criminal behavior across the life course.

Conclusions

To date, ADHD research has been carried out primarily by biomedical researchers and de-emphasized by criminologists whose training is overwhelmingly in the social sciences. The special expertise of criminologists in uncovering environmental correlates of antisocial behavior can benefit biomedical researchers who in turn can assist criminologists in uncovering the individual-level correlates of antisocial behavior.     

The ethical identity of law students

This paper uses measures of values, moral outlook and professional identity to explore the ethical and professional identity of law students. We do so in two jurisdictions, surveying 441 students studying in England and Wales and 569 students studying in the US. The survey covers the first and final years of an undergraduate law degree and the postgraduate vocational stage in England and Wales, as well as students in all years of the JD programme in the US. We explore whether law students towards the end of their legal education have ethical identities predictive of less ethical conduct than those at the beginning of their legal education; whether law students intending careers in business law have values and profiles consistent with less ethical conduct than those intending to work for government or individuals; and what factors might explain these differences in ethical outlook. Our findings suggest that ethical identity is strongly associated with gender and career intentions. They also suggest weaker moral identities for students intending to practise business law. Ultimately, our findings support a conclusion that is more nuanced than the predominant theses about the impact of legal education on student ethicality which tend to suggest legal education diminishes ethicality.