Access to Justice and the Legal Process (LAW256H1S)

This course will explore issues of access to justice and how procedural rules can facilitate access to justice or be used to frustrate it. Students will learn the rules of civil procedure through this lens, consider alternative dispute resolution structures for specific types of disputes, and explore how the benefits of alternative structures could be incorporated into procedural rules. The course will proceed in logical stages, as follows: (a) overview of the rules; (b) exploration of key impediments to accessing justice; (c) review of alternative dispute resolution models; (d) examining the potential benefits of new technology such as artificial intelligence; and, (e) revisiting the procedural rules with a view to potential reforms. The existing model is quite clearly broken: we will discuss why, and how to fix it.