Decades of civil justice reform have failed to deliver lasting change in England and Wales, a new report authored by Dr John Sorabji finds. The research, commissioned by the Nuffield Foundation as part of its Public Right to Justice programme, provides the first system-wide analysis of civil justice reform over the past four decades.
The report – ‘Improving civil justice reform – an analysis of major reviews in England and Wales’ – critically assesses four major reviews of the civil justice system: the Civil Justice Review (1988), the Woolf Review (1994–1996), the Jackson Costs Review (2009), and the Briggs Review (2015). It concludes that, while reform has introduced important changes, it has too often fallen short on delivering lasting improvements in access to justice.
The report raises important questions about how effectively the system supports people in resolving legal problems, and highlights four key failings in the reform process: definitional; constitutional; institutional; and evidential. Taken together they have underpinned an approach to reform that is court-centric rather than user-focused, ad hoc rather than systematic, and lacking in a sound evidential basis.
To address these issues, the report recommends that future reform should adopt a broader understanding of access to justice and proposes the creation of a permanent Civil Justice Reform Institute to devise and oversee the implementation of a long-term, holistic approach to reform, which looks beyond the civil courts. This should be supported by a new Access to Justice Institute, responsible for gathering and scrutinising the evidence-base for reform.
Dr Sorabji said: “Delivering enduring reform that transforms access to justice requires a fresh approach – one that is permanent, sustainably funded, evidence-based and centred on the public’s needs. Government should recommit, through statute, to the public right of access to justice, understood in a wider sense than simply access to the civil courts, and ensure it is effectively secured through the civil justice system.”