NCAJ is an independent organization, that makes its home at Fordham Law School where Access to justice a key institutional priority. The law school's A2J initiative is a school-wide effort to to leverage teaching, direct service, scholarship and advocacy in support of the cause. NCAJ helps lead that initiative, co-teaching each spring the AtJ Seminar (check out the 2024 Syllabus), and partnering with students and faculty on events and other initiatives, some examples of which are:
The AtJ Solutions Symposium: With People Struggling and the Law Failing, What are the Solutions to the Access to Justice Crisis in America? (with Fordham's Urban Law Journal)
On February 9, 2024, NCAJ and Fordham Law School's Urban Law Journal hosted the "AtJ Solutions Symposium" to examine practical solutions for increasing access to justice for people contending with life challenges that implicate the law. Debt collection threatens people’s financial stability and liberty. Eviction threatens their homes. Family prosecution threatens their relationships. In each context, and in many others, people face powerful opponents and complex legal systems, often compromising their rights and interests without meaningful legal assistance and without awareness of better options that would have been available. Many of the consequences fall hardest on communities of color. A civil access to justice movement seeks to empower people in these challenges. With more than 500 people attending, national experts considered the movement’s leading edge: policies that include: i) abolitionist solutions that narrow the footprint of the legal system in people’s lives; ii) civil right to counsel solutions that entitle people to legal representation in matters implicating fundamental human needs, iii) empowerment solutions that entitle people to turn to friends, neighbors, and other front line justice workers (not only lawyers) for help defending their rights; and, iv) additional interventions that include increasing amending underlying laws, relying on new technologies, assuring that attorneys general and other officials enforce that laws that offer basic legal protections, and more.
NYC Mayoral Forum on Civil Justice
In March 2021, NCAJ and Fordham Law School hosted a forum on access to justice for leading Mayoral candidates in New York City. The event was a vital opportunity to put the candidates on record about key civil justice concerns that weren't being raised often enough on the campaign trail. We were particularly eager to push candidates to think about problems triggered by the pandemic's economic fallout. What followed was a lively discussion that put the candidates on the record about their views on evictions, debt collection lawsuits, family law concerns-- and the larger need to get people more help with their legal problems.
Access to Justice Summit
In 2018, NCAJ and Fordham hosted an Access to Justice Summit that gathered more than 85 activists, practitioners and thought leaders from across the country. With a full agenda, Summit participants debated hard questions about the focus of the civil justice reform movement, and also discussed the resources and capacities that are needed to realize the visions and accomplish the goals that are important to the movement and most significant in people’s lives.
To build on the strength of the conversations we had at the Summit, we worked with the law school to gather and publish the A2J Summit Collection. The Collection's 14 articles advanced diverse perspectives on the current state-- and future-- of the access to justice movement.
Where the Civil and Criminal Systems Meet
On October 19, 2016, Fordham Law School marked the arrival of the National Center for Access to Justice (NCAJ) and the launch of the school’s new Access to Justice Initiative, with a public discussion about the need to bring civil and criminal justice reform efforts together. Find more information about that discussion, including a full recording of the event, here.
