The rule of law is compromised by the toleration of poverty, in an era when the world has the resources, expertise and capability to end poverty and its damaging effect on justice and equality for all. Lawyers, including current and future lawyers in law schools, who value access to justice under the rule of law have individual and collective responsibilities to do something about poverty through law and justice. Law schools and other branches of the global legal profession can and should, do more in that mutual enterprise than most of them currently do.
To gain mass acceptance for those three fundamental propositions and make a difference on poverty, the role of law schools in combatting poverty needs a conceptual framework justifying that role and an operational plan of action that implements it. Accordingly, this chapter covers both conceptual and practical dimensions of the relationship between poverty and the rule of law and how that relationship manifests itself in the ways in which law schools conduct legal education, scholarship and external engagement with the profession and the world at large.
What lawyers do or fail to do about poverty must be assessed and practised within prevailing systems and standards of governance, regulation and professional (including social) responsibility. These standards are not sacrosanct. Instead, they are subject to scrutiny and criticism if they obstruct action on poverty or even institutionalise oppression of poor people under cover of the rule of law. Individual law schools and the community of legal academics as a whole can act alone or together with other branches of the legal profession in alleviating the conditions of poor people, who in practice are denied full equality and access to justice in multiple ways. How law schools and the legal profession as a whole respond to poverty is itself responsive to broader disruptions to legal thinking, practice and responsibility in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, reinforced by transformational approaches to successive global crises such as the climate emergency and pandemics such as Covid-19.
As a collective constituency capable of creating meaningful change about poverty, injustice and inequality, law school communities comprise legal academics, law students as future leaders of the profession(s), alumni, current and retired judges and lawyers and partner organisations. They can be powerful communities for exposing and redressing gaps and inequities in law-making, the administration of justice and broader access to justice for poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. The challenge for law schools and their communities is to embed understanding and action about poverty and associated inequalities and injustices in the DNA of legal education, scholarship and engagement, particularly through clinical legal education (CLE) and community legal centres (CLCs).
This chapter outlines and illustrates various ways in which law schools and their clinical programmes can take action on poverty and empower poor clients and communities in law schools’ research, education and engagement with their various constituencies and communities. We are determined that our discussion produces a concrete focus on the highly necessary reorientation of law schools, sufficient to prioritise within legal and justice education the urgent need to end poverty, inequality and injustice. Throughout this chapter, we therefore focus on a comprehensive suite of practical steps for action by law schools and others in the legal profession in helping poor, vulnerable and marginalised people achieve basic human rights and equal access to justice under the rule of law.
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