NCAJ has long supported research that examines and evaluates multiple dimensions of the access to justice movement, from hosting early initiatives bringing together researchers and advocates at national conferences, to participating in research studies on particular interventions, to establishing the Justice Index and its component parts, to initiating an annually recurring national ATJ Roundtable offering scholars an opportunity to present their works in progress for feedback from other scholars and advocates. All this work is described across NCAJ's website, while on this page we highlight a few of NCAJ's research initiatives, as follows:
The AtJ Roundtable:
Access to justice research crosses law, sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, and other disciplines and fields. Recognizing the need to support this important work and to draw lessons from it, NCAJ (David Udell) and Fordham Law School (Prof. Bruce Green) invited colleagues from the University of South Carolina Law School (Prof. Elizabeth Chambliss), the Georgia Tech Law School (Prof. Lauren Sudeall, now based at Vanderbilt Law, which has become a co-sponsor of the AtJ Roundtable), and Arizona State University (Prof. Rebecca Sandefur) to join in organizing and hosting annual gatherings of scholars with varying perspectives on the issues. The inaugural AtJ Roundtable, held at Fordham Law on May 18-20, 2022, was a great success. Fifteen authors, joined in discussion by five others, presented writings with implications for policy reform initiatives with the potential to increase access to justice. The initial papers employed a range of methodologies and covered such varied topics as tenants’ rights to prevent dilapidation of buildings, public housing residents’ rights to live in pest-safe institutions, attorneys’ views of Utah’s experimental advocacy roles for frontline social services workers, a philanthropic foundation’s comprehensive proposal to establish benchmarks to help prompt modernization of the civil courts, a psychological study of approaches for overcoming lawyers’ resistance to doing pro bono, and a proposal for creating and analyzing data on domestic violence in South Carolina. The inaugural event realized our early ambition to build support for scholars and for scholarship that promotes access to justice in the real world. We have been delighted to help support subsequent AtJ Roundtable events held at South Carolina Law in 2023 and Arizona State University in 2024, and we are looking forward to participating in the next AtJ Roundtable, which will be held at Vanderbilt Law in 2025.
The NSF Award of 2018:
On July 23, 2018, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a pathbreaking award to promote access to justice scholarship, naming Rebecca Sandefur principal investigator, with Alyx Mark & David Udell as co-principal investigators. The focus of the project was on growing the field of access to justice scholarship and building an agenda for that research by identifying scholars doing pertinent work in diverse fields, and by bringing the scholars together for a intensive workshop in June 2019.
NSF explained at the time:
"This project will consist of a census-style survey of academic disciplines engaged in access to justice scholarship and an intensive workshop. It is designed to build a research field and an evidence base by identifying emerging access to justice researchers, coordinating collaboration across academic disciplines, and producing a research agenda and original scholarship to give access to justice research the vigor and definition of a field."
For the original abstract introducing the project, see NSF’s announcement.
In April 2019, 25 scholars from across social science disciplines came together at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago. Another 25 more experienced scholars were matched as mentors to the more junior scholars.
All of the participating scholars engage in scholarship that is important for understanding and improving the justice system. However, virtually none had routinely identified their work as “access to justice scholarship”- because prior to this event, the field had not existed.
The workshop involved two days of dynamic conversation among the social scientists -- including sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, political scientists, and others -- about how best to draw on differing lines of social science research to expand insight into the justice system. Following the workshop, the project sponsored an additional three online zoom convenings (NCAJ moderated one of these) at the Law and Society Association’s annual conference in 2020. These helped inspire and carry out next-level conversations about the growth of the field and about particular research initiatives.
The formal part of the NSF project has now been completed, but the project is helping to generate next activities among scholars committed to access to justice research. Most recently, two rounds of awards have been made to scholars through the ABF/JPB Access to Justice Scholars program hosted by Prof. Sandefur at the American Bar Foundation.