An effective, fair, and accessible justice system is fundamental to social and economic well-being.
Complementing our wider work on justice, our Public right to justice programme underlines that while the public have the notional right to such a system this is often compromised in practice. The programme examines the challenges and explores possible solutions.
While centred on the needs of individuals and communities, particularly those facing disadvantage, it also examines how resources and institutional structures influence overall system performance and accessibility. Our work will centre on the civil, family and tribunal systems.
Through our grants and other commissioned work we will be particularly focusing on the following:
- Whether and how people’s legal needs are being met
- People’s experiences of interacting with the justice system, and how these can be improved
- Reforms that could make the system more user-centred, transparent, and inclusive responsive
- How system governance and resourcing might be improved
This is a cross-Nuffield project, with close involvement from the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory and the Ada Lovelace Institute.