Rushcliffe Fifty Years on
The Changing Role of Civil Legal Aid within the Welfare State
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11449788 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tamara Goriely (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1994 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 545 |
| Publication date | 1994-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Law and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0263-323X • E-ISSN: 1467-6478 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1410672 |
| OpenAlex | W2322331046 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 4 |
The last few years have been difficult ones for legal aid. As the government abolishes the contributory green forms scheme, increases contributions, and holds down pay rates, the President of the Law Society has accused it of crippling a 'once proud public service'.' At the same time, the number of cases dealt with by the scheme and the cost per case continue to increase.2 Legal Action Group has described the current state of legal aid as 'stagflation'.3 Increased use of legal aid and rising costs are combined with decreasing eligibility, morale, and belief. Why is it that each year the legal aid scheme appears to deal less well with the increasing demands made upon it? This chapter looks back over the last fifty years of civil legal aid, to chart its varied fortunes within the welfare state. It argues that the changing philosophies of welfare have shaped both the structure of the scheme, and the demands made upon it. At the same time as governments have confined direct welfare services to the poor to the neglect of those of moderate means they have put greater emphasis on individual 'consumer' action as a means of regulating welfare providers. Thus, the early 1980s saw the expansion of rights enforced through courts and tribunals, though by the end of the decade the emphasis had shifted to internal complaints systems and formal complaints handlers, such as regulators, ombudsmen, and inspectors. Legal aid has failed to keep pace with either development. Private solicitors have traditionally ignored welfare issues; the scheme fails to pay for representation before most tribunals; and the varied advice needs raised by the Citizen's Charter approach have been ignored. The welfare state is a difficult concept, as the meanings attaching to the term have changed markedly since the Second World War. In 1945 it was an aspirational depiction of a new kind of state: by the 1960s it was a label applied to specific, central, public bureaucracies.4 Now it is often used to describe a minor and residual function of a state primarily concerned with other matters. For the purposes of the present discussion, the welfare state
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| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.21 |
| Citation span | 1998 - 2017 (20) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |