Foreword: Letter from the Cochairs

“Our justice system has become inaccessible to millions of poor people and so every day, we violate the ‘equal justice under law’ motto engraved on the front of the grand United States Supreme Court.”1 This statement, true ten years ago, remains true in 2024. Over the last ten years, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Making Justice Accessible project has worked to understand, assess, and advocate for innovative solutions to the civil justice gap. Since 2014, the Academy has drawn insights and talents from a wide range of individuals and groups to make clear the stakes in social, economic, and human costs of that gap and marshalled evidence and awareness about promising solutions in service of ensuring all Americans have access to the justice our nation heralded in the very first sentence of the United States Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

This report reflects research and data analysis as well as convenings and discussions across a wide range of participants in the American Academy’s Making Justice Accessible project. The project has already led to the historic Dædalus Winter 2019 issue, dedicated to Access to Justice, which fittingly marked the first open access issue of the journal. Additionally, two reports detail recommendations and guidance for professionals and institutions pursuing access to justice initiatives:

• The Civil Justice for All report surveys innovative methods for providing legal services and assistance and calls for the establishment of a new and sustaining national initiative to coordinate multiple efforts needed to address the civil justice gap.
• In Measuring Civil Justice for All, the Academy elevated data collection as a priority and presented a blueprint for data collection and sharing across agencies and courts, and between federal and state leaders. 

In this new document, the Academy offers a roadmap for strengthening the collaboration and coordination required to achieve civil justice for all. 

This initiative has been steered by the Academy’s previous presidents, Jonathan Fanton and David Oxtoby. Many Academy members have served as advisors for the project, including Diane Wood, John M. Hansen, David M. Rubenstein, Ken Frazier, and Goodwin Liu, founding members of the initial exploratory meeting covering access to justice. Critical to this work are the contributions of the project’s Advisory Committees and Working Groups. We are especially grateful for the vital contributions of Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Nathan L. Hecht, William C. Hubbard, David F. Levi, Lance M. Liebman, Judith Resnik, Margaret H. Marshall, James J. Sandman, Judy Perry Martinez, Harriet Miers, Andrew Perlman, and Rebecca Sandefur.

Thanks as well to the Academy staff that made this work possible: Eduardo Gonzalez and Betsy Super, Tania Munz, Darshan Goux, and Peter Robinson. Special thanks are also due to the writing team that joined in the effort to produce this report: Daniel B. Rodriguez, Advisory Committee member, and E. J. Graff, editorial consultant. 

Finally, we thank the innumerable stakeholders, thought leaders, and experts who contributed knowledge and insights to our project team, and who gave generously through interviews, focus groups, comments, workshops, and other activities to develop the lessons in this and previous reports.

These efforts started with a raised hand nearly ten years ago—a willingness to expose a crisis and call for action. When the American Academy’s then-president Jonathan Fanton asked for ideas that could be funded and launched by a new exploratory fund, one of us raised our hand. The Academy hosted a meeting at the University of California, Berkeley Law School, where John Levi made clear that the legal system needed help from professionals far beyond the legal profession—that while lawyers and judges, in part, created the problem, it would take the help of all disciplines to recreate and reimagine our country’s civil justice system. During the ten years since, the Academy has supported the Making Justice Accessible initiative in ways that exceeded even that ambitious call. 

At the opening of the Making Justice Accessible Summit in March 2024, we returned to Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s remarkable Law Day address at the University of Chicago’s law school on May 1, 1964:

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

—Robert F. Kennedy

In publishing Achieving Civil Justice, the Academy continues its commitment to this pressing issue by advancing a shift in the narrative surrounding civil justice, focusing on an approach that is both pragmatic and pluralistic. We sincerely hope this report is useful— that it honors and dignifies the important work happening in every community, and that it will inspire and create even more ripples, which will build into the big wave our country needs to keep faith with its founding vision of equal justice for all. 

John G. Levi, Chairman of the Board of the Legal Services Corporation; Senior Counsel at Sidley Austin LLP 

Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard University 

Kenneth C. Frazier, Chairman of Health Assurance Initiatives at General Catalyst

Endnotes

• 1Martha Minow, “We Must Ensure Everyone Has Access to Equal Justice,” The Boston Globe, October 23, 2014.