The Cost of Justice
Briefing Paper for Public Positions Theme Event, 24 March 2014
WiSER, History Workshop & Wits Political Studies Department
Introduction
Although South Africa’s legal and constitutional regime is one of the best in the world, meaningful access to justice remains largely a function of economic resources. This briefing paper examines the reasons for -- and controversies around -- the costs of legal representation in South Africa as well opening up the concept of access to justice more broadly. Framed within the social justice concerns of the Public Positions series, the paper largely conceives of the legal services sector as a market consisting of the producers of legal services, the consumers of legal services, and the product itself: legal services. The aim here is to ask the social justice question of this ‘market’: over the long term who is meant to bear the costs of justice? The state? Citizens? Corporates? Donors?
