Access to civil justice research is broadly concerned with how people understand and experience life events that are institutionalized as actionable in the civil law. These events, like the threat of eviction or foreclosure, caring for dependent children and adults, or dealing with educational loans or medical bills, become legal problems in areas like housing, family law, and debt. Although civil justice problems have potentially wide-ranging and powerful impacts on core areas of life, sporadic scholarly attention to access to justice has left scholars, policy makers, and society at large with little general knowledge about civil justice problems and their role in and impact on society. Achieving meaningful access to justice requires an empirically-grounded understanding of the current status of public access to justice, as well as of what concrete proposals for increasing access are likely to be efficacious, scalable and sustainable. 

This project pursued the goal of a scholarly renaissance in access to justice research, engaging social scientists across disciplinary lines to investigate the justice system, understand what it means in our society to have access to justice, and deepen inquiries being pursued within and across disciplines. The activities aimed to: (i) define a field by coordinating interdisciplinary collaboration in identifying its key questions and puzzles; (ii) create a supply of scholarship by nurturing a new generation of access to justice scholars pursuing theoretically informed, analytically rigorous, and empirically sophisticated research; (iii) support scholarly demand for the research by realizing latent synergies between currently disconnected strands of intellectual activity; and, (iv) support policy demand for the research by helping researchers to translate research insights out of the academy as actionable, reliable intelligence for funders, policy makers, and practitioners. The workshop enabled early-career and emerging researchers from diverse backgrounds with novel perspectives to play a central role in defining the emerging access to justice field.

The principal activities of the project were:

1)      A horizon scan charting contemporary access to justice research and researchers across disciplines in social sciences and law. A survey was distributed through multiple outreach channels, including the professional networks of the PIs and the project advisory committee; and over two dozen sections of professional associations in law, the social sciences, and interdisciplinary social science. 287 scholars from a wide range of disciplines were surveyed about their understanding of the important questions and puzzles in access to justice research and about the specific individuals they saw as currently making or poised to make important contributions to this research area.  In addition to a rich description of current research, pressing questions, and data needed for work in the access to justice field, the horizon scan produced nearly 400 names of people nominated as established or emerging scholars producing research relevant to access to civil justice.

2)      A 1.5 day workshop bringing together earlier-career scholars from a wide range of disciplines to develop their ideas and strategies for scientific discovery by pushing their research forward, getting it published in core disciplinary outlets, and connecting its insights to practical application. A widely circulated open call for applications received 100 responses. 26 applicants were selected to participate in the conference, 24 of whom were able to attend. Participants represented a variety of academic disciplines including anthropology, psychology, sociology, political science, and law. Attendees of the workshop held at the American Bar Foundation on June 13-14, 2019 engaged in a series of small group and plenary sessions designed to help them move early-stage research projects forward. The small group sessions centered around the substantive and theoretical interests of participants, and connected groups of scholars across disciplinary lines for discussions about their research.  Scholars met in interdisciplinary groups to discuss the theoretical implications of their research in the areas of: policymaking and policy change, access to legal institutions, the design of legal institutions, and the consequences of legal system interactions.  They also met in discipline-focused groups to discuss how their projects on the topic of access to justice could inform key questions and theories in their home disciplines. The plenary sessions gave participants an opportunity to learn about seeking external support for scholarship from past NSF Law & Social Science Program Director Brian Bornstein. These sessions also provided opportunities for participants to identify appropriate outlets and learn more about the process of peer-reviewed scholarship from editors of key journals.

3)      The creation of an inter-disciplinary, inter-generational network of scholars engaged in this essential research. Participants can communicate currently via a listserv. A number of senior scholars have agreed to serve as mentors for earlier-career scholars who participated in the workshop.

Last Modified: 12/06/2019
Modified by: Rebecca L Sandefur