Access to Justice and Rule-of (Good) Law: The Cunning of Judicial Reform in India

• Published in: Indian journal of human development Vol. 2; no. 2; pp. 279 - 302
• Main Author: Baxi, Pratiksha
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01-07-2008
• Subjects: Discourse; Everyday life; India; Justice; Political power; Politics; Reform; Rule of law; State
• ISSN: 0973-7030; 2456-480X
• DOI: 10.1177/0973703020080202

This article is not an exhaustive review of judicial reform in India, nor does it contrast the different programmes for judicial reform over time. This article retains the distinction between 'access' to justice and access to 'justice' as an important framework to understand how the politics of judicial reform when aligned to access to justice expands state power. It engages with those perspectives that do not sufficiently interrogate judicial reform in relation to how substantive law excludes the poor by relating access of justice with, what has been called, the rule-of-[good] law. I argue that the cartographies of the discourses on access to justice rest on the everyday context as the condition of legal redress. Yet, the everyday remains a given category wherein the contingency and instability that mark poverty and violence are not adequately theorized. Access to justice discourses assume a certain stability of politico-jural regimes wherein displacement, violence and refuge do not become central issues in the crafting of judicial reform.