NCJ Number
87595
Date Published
1982
Length
69 pages
Annotation
One working paper discusses legal aid programs in nine Western European countries and provides an annotated bibliography on these programs, and the second working paper comments on the factors that affect the likelihood of innovative legal services delivery in Europe.
Abstract
The bibliography covers legal aid, including historical and critical accounts of the development of legal services for the poor, in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany, Norway, Sweden, France, and Italy. One thesis advanced throughout the bibliography is that a 'political bar,' in the sense of public-interest advocacy, is more likely to develop from a part of the bar which is ideologically committed to the legal problems of the poor and is able to live on the subsidies from representing the poor; i.e., the existence of a 'social bar' is a prerequisite for a 'political bar.' The second thesis emphasized in the bibliography is that academic publications, especially social science research, played a significant role in uncovering legal problems of the poor, which traditionally have been excluded from the legal system. Differences in the institutional approach taken toward legal aid in Western European countries lie in the following sets of variables: (1) the level of overall welfare expenditure of which legal aid is a part; (2) the structure of the legal profession, especially the position taken by lawyers in protecting professional standards and market privileges; and (3) the integration of social science arguments into discussions of the legal profession, the integration of social scientists into law schools, and their participation in legal policy discussions.