The legal problems of everyday life

Abstract

This chapter examines the prevalence of justiciable civil justice problems experienced by Canadians, the ways in which people respond to them and the consequences of experiencing these kinds of problems. The results show that experiencing justiciable problems is a nearly normal feature of the everyday lives of a large proportion of the population in a modern society. Particularly, important features of justiciable problems are the prevalence of multiple problems, the clustering of justiciable problems and the linkages between justiciable, health and social problems. The results suggest that justiciable problems may be a part of broader patterns of social exclusion. One implication of this research is that access to justice services may not only address legal problems but, by doing so, may have the effect of forestalling processes of social exclusion of which civil law problems are a part.

Citation

Currie, A. (2009), "The legal problems of everyday life", Sandefur, R.L. (Ed.) Access to Justice (Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Vol. 12), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-41. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1521-6136(2009)0000012005