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In this book, Lowell E. Baier, one of America's preeminent experts on environmental litigation, chronicles the century-long story of U.S. natural resources, focusing on litigation, citizen suit provisions, and attorneys' fees. He provides the first book-length, comprehensive examination of the little-known Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) and its role in environmental litigation. Originally intended to support veterans, the disabled, and small businesses, Baier argues that EAJA now paralyzes America's public land management agencies. Baier introduces readers to the history of EAJA, examines the many beneficiaries of the law, describes in depth twenty of the most prominent litigious environmental groups in America, and recommends carefully tailored amendments to EAJA to correct environmental abuses of the law while protecting legitimate interests. Inside the Equal Access to Justice Act will be a valuable resource for the environmental legal community, environmentalists, practitioners at all levels of government, and all readers interested in environmental policy and the rise of the administrative state.

Purpose: The paper investigates the dichotomy between public and private law in terms of access to justice, especially the distribution of competences between various courts and tribunals.Design/Methodology/Approach: The study employs juridical analysis of normative texts and legal comparison.Findings: The continuous expansion of administrative justice calls for a more differentiated yet generalised regulation of access to justice.Academic Contribution to the Field: The analysis addresses policy options regarding the distribution of competences between civil and administrative courts, as well as the potential establishment of specialised courts.Originality/Significance/Value: The analysis of regulatory approaches helps legislators meet the requirements of both timeliness and effectiveness of judicial protection, as well as handle the challenges of blending public and private law instruments to create a regulation that is able to provide effective judicial protection and consistency in case-law. Namen: Prispevek proučuje dihotomijo med javnim in zasebnim pravom z vidika dostopa do sodnega varstva, zlasti porazdelitve pristojnosti med različnimi sodišči in razsodišči.Zasnova/metodologija/pristop: Študija uporablja pravno analizo normativnih besedil in pravno primerjavo.Ugotovitve: Nenehna širitev upravnega sodstva zahteva bolj diferencirano, a hkrati splošno ureditev dostopa do sodnega varstva.Akademski doprinos k znanosti: Analiza obravnava politične možnosti razdelitve pristojnosti med civilnimi in upravnimi sodišči ter morebitno ustanovitev specializiranih sodišč.Izvirnost/pomen/vrednost: Analiza regulativnih pristopov pomaga zakonodajalcem izpolniti zahteve po pravočasnosti in učinkovitosti sodnega varstva ter se spopasti z izzivi združevanja instrumentov javnega in zasebnega prava za oblikovanje ureditve, ki lahko zagotovi učinkovito sodno varstvo in doslednost sodne prakse.

In accordance with Article 15 of the Aarhus Convention, the first meeting of the parties to this Convention established a non-judicial and consultative Compliance Committee to consider, among other matters, individual cases concerning compliance by parties with their obligations. The Committee is traditionally viewed as a non-judicial, soft mechanism and its rulings as non-binding, soft law. In recent years, however, to support the claim that rulings of the Committee have an impact and legal effects, some scholars have departed from the traditional perspective and characterized the Committee as a more judicialized mechanism, which issues legally binding rulings. This characterization assumes a correlation between judicialization and binding effect on the one hand, and legal effect on the other. The latter claim, however, has not been supported by a systematic assessment of the impact of the Committee's rulings on domestic practice. Against this background, the article assesses the impact of Article 9-related rulings of the Committee, issued between 2004 and 2012, on national legal orders. The assessment reveals that in fewer than 41% of the cases parties recorded some degree of compliance with the rulings of the Committee, whereas in 59% they recorded no progress. The quantitative assessment and respective qualitative insights, among other factors, suggest that the normative character of the Committee and its rulings play an auxiliary role in the process of ensuring compliance with the provisions of the Aarhus Convention. The decision of parties to comply is determined typically by the substance of the rulings as they stand in relation to domestic circumstances rather than by the institutional features of the Committee and binding effect of its rulings.

The Utah State Courts' Self-Help Center provides information to help individuals-including older adults-to understand their rights and responsibilities, and to help them resolve legal problems if they cannot afford an attorney or choose not to hire one. The Center is a model for statewide remote-services delivery. It uses telephone and Internet-based technologies (email, text, and website), and interacts with self-represented individuals, the courts, the legal community, libraries, social services entities, and other government and community partners.

We are thankful to Naomi Kingston, Phil Franks and Adrian Martin, who provided insightful comments on the manuscript, and to all respondents to this questionnaire and all organizations that helped us to distribute it, especially to Heather Bingham. This work is funded by the EU Horizon 2020 program under the MSCA grant agreement no. 659881 to NZ-C and supported by a JCFG from the Spanish MEC to IP (IJCI-2016-28475). NZ-C and NDB also acknowledge the DNRF for funding for CMEC, grant no. DNRF96.

Objective : to study legal technologies as a tool for transforming the legal services market and improving access to justice. Methods : the article uses general dialectical method of cognition, as well as general scientific (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction) and specific scientific (formal-legal) research methods. Results : legal technology can help close the access-to-justice gap by increasing efficiency, democratizing access to information, and helping consumers solve their own legal problems or connecting them with lawyers who can. However, without proper design, technology can also consolidate power, automate bias, and magnify inequality. The state-by-state regulation of legal services has not adapted to the emerging technology-driven landscape that is continually being reshaped by artificial intelligence-driven tools like ChatGPT. Confusion abounds concerning whether use of these technologies amounts to unauthorized practice of law, leads to discrimination, adequately protects client data, violates the duty of technological competence, or requires prohibited cross-industry business structures. Despite widespread calls for regulatory reforms that respond to these uncertainties, few jurisdictions have acted, as little data exists about the use, benefits, and harms of rapidly emerging legal technologies. Scientific novelty : This article argues that, in light of these problems, regulatory reform processes should be explored at the national level, where expertise, as well as empirical benefits and economic advantages, would yield more informed and impactful reforms aimed at balancing consumer protection and access to justice. The article provides a comprehensive proposal for an opt-in national legal services “sandbox” – a regulatory reform mechanism that carefully tests innovative services through temporary safe harbors and data generation that leads to more informed regulatory decision-making. Although legal services are traditionally regulated at the state level, other industries have benefited from licensing individuals locally while regulating the technologies they use nationally, and state bars already rely on national entities to help with other regulatory functions, like drafting rules of professional conduct. Legal technology’s potential to help close the justice gap – a national crisis – warrants a similar national response. Practical significance : the main provisions and conclusions of the article can be used in scientific, pedagogical and law enforcement activities when considering the issues related to legal technologies.

Lawyers keep the gates of public justice institutions, particularly through their roles in formal procedures like hearings and trials. Yet, it is not clear what lawyers do in such quintessentially legal settings: conclusions from past research are bedeviled by a lack of clear theory and inconsistencies in research design. Conceptualizing litigation work in terms of professional expertise, I conduct a theoretically grounded synthesis of the findings of extant studies of lawyers' impact on civil case outcomes. Using an innovative combination of statistical techniques—meta-analysis and nonparametric bounding—the present study transcends previous work to reveal a domain of consensus for lawyers' effect on case outcomes and to explore why this effect varies so greatly across past studies. For the types of cases researched to date, knowledge of substantive law explains surprisingly little of lawyers' advantage compared to lay people appearing unrepresented. Instead, lawyers' impact is greatest when they assist in navigating relatively simple (to lawyers) procedures and where their relational expertise helps courts follow their own rules. Findings for law generalize to other professions, where substantive and relational expertise may shape the conduct and consequences of professional work.

We conducted a field experiment in which 311 low-income individuals seeking a divorce were randomly assigned to receive access to a pro bono lawyer (versus minimal help) to assist with filing for divorce. Examining court records, we found that assignment to an attorney made a large difference in whether participants filed for and obtained a divorce. Three years after randomization, 46% of the treated group had terminated their marriages in the proper legal venue, compared to 9% of the control group. Among “compliers”— participants who obtained representation only if assigned to receive it—those with lawyers were far more likely to file for and obtain a divorce than those not assigned lawyers. Because divorce implicates fundamental constitutional interests and can be effectuated only by resort to the courts, the US Constitution requires that dissolution of marriage be made achievable regardless of ability to pay. Yet, we observed few low-income individuals who were able to initiate divorce suits on their own. Through interviews and archival research, we identified barriers that low-income litigants faced in navigating the divorce system, including mandatory wait times, limited hours at important facilities, and burdensome paperwork sometimes requiring access to photocopiers and typewriters. This study therefore documents a salient instance in which a civil legal process was inaccessible to those without lawyers, even though their legal issues were straightforward, involving few if any matters for courts to adjudicate.

Hearing a dispute by a court in a reasonable time is one of the crucial conditions for the existence of an effective judicial system as imposed by the European law and national legal orders. That requirement is contrary to the expectations of individuals to question the judgments of lower courts before the courts of the highest instance. The purpose of this article is to explore the question of values that should be taken into consideration by legislatures in a process of determining the access of administrative cases to the highest courts. The analysis is based on the example of Austrian and Polish legal systems. In both countries, there is a separate two-instance administrative judiciary. However, the conditions of the access to the Supreme Administrative Courts differ. In Poland, that access is unlimited, considering the constitutional principle of two-instance court proceedings. In Austria, the right in question is limited to cases deemed significant for broader interest, i.e. not only the one of the parties to the proceeding. An analysis of the normative consequences of each solution leads to the conclusion that procedural limitations concerning the access to the highest courts foster their role in preserving the uniformity of the case law and ensuring a high standard of its interpretation. A system with no limitations does not guarantee the determination of a concrete dispute in a reasonable time and thus cannot be considered effective.