Breaking Barriers: A Socio-Legal Analysis of the Right to Access to Justice

Abstract

Aspiration for 'justice' is as old as humanity itself. And endless has been the voyage of humanity to discover its meaning. Throughout the pages of academic history, philosophers have debated its meaning without the prospect of any consensus. Aristotle provided a complicated account of justice, dividing the same into two categories, a general concept of justice as 'the lawful' and a particular concept as 'the fair and equal.'1 Emphasizing on the nature of 'General Justice,' he suggested, '.. justice is complete virtue to the highest degree because it is the complete exercise of complete justice.'2 While Thomas Aquinas regarded justice as a habit which makes a man 'capable of doing what is just and of being just in action and in intention,'3 Mencius observed that '[a] 11 men have things they will not do, and of what makes this so can be fully developed in the things they will do then 'Justice' results.'4 Aristotle's sentiments found echo in Adam Smith when he argued that justice is a virtue, the observance of which 'is not left to the freedom of our own wills, which may be resentment, and consequently to punishment.'5 John Stuart Mill after analyzing the diverse applications of the term 'justice' concluded, 'it is a matter of some difficulty to seize the mental link which holds them together, and on which the moral sentiment adhering to the term essentially depends.'6 However, on a discussion based on the etymology of the word, Mill argued that "justice is a name for certain moral requirements which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility, and are, therefore, of more paramount obligations...'7 More recently, John Rawls in his approach to justice suggested that 'the fundamental idea in the concept of justice is fairness'8 and offered an analysis of the concept of justice from this point of view.