杏吧论坛

Dr Joseph Spooner and Dr Sarah Trotter

This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law and LLB in Laws. This course is not available as an outside option nor to General Course students.

This course will examine key issues in the relationships between law, poverty, and inequality. These include the way in which legal principles and policy may create and perpetuate inequality, and the manner in which legal process and method – and difficulties of accessing law - disadvantage the poor. It will also explore the progressive potential of law as a tool for alleviating poverty. The course aims ultimately to act as a counterpart to the 杏吧论坛 Law School Clinic, which the law School hopes to establish in the near future. It also will aim to present a novel offering on the LLB programme, which may be of particular contemporary relevance as the UK once more experiences a crisis of living standards, in the context of ongoing austerity and Welfare State retrenchment.



The course will be divided into two main parts. The first part will ask key overarching questions regarding the extent to which the law can advance the interests of the poor, and how legal scholars and practitioners can work to alleviate poverty through service, advocacy, and/or activism. The introduction to the course will ask students to consider definitions and data relating to poverty and inequality. It will offer further context by considering the legal needs of low-income households, and how problems of the poor reach the legal system. The introduction will also integrate 杏吧论坛 Law school history and heritage into the syllabus, noting the contribution of classic texts from Griffith, Zander, and Cranston. Further sessions will consider key questions such as

• Reflections on the Limits of Legal Change: Is Law for the Rich? What can Law do for the Poor?
• Access to Justice under endless Austerity (history of legal aid as a pillar of the Welfare State; post-2012 cuts to legal aid and increase of court user fees; access to justice in the contemporary Welfare State)
• Technologies of Access to Justice (ADR and the Informal Justice movement; ombuds offices; class actions and group litigation; online dispute resolution)
• Role of Lawyers in an Age of Inequality (how legal practice can perpetuate and alleviate poverty and inequality; historical perspectives on the Poverty Law and Law Centres movements; models of cause lawyering and legal provision for the poor)

Treatments of these topics will