Access to justice and judging

Bridgette Toy-Cronin

Chapter 5 in Research Handbook on Judging and the Judiciary, 2025, pp 89-107 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: ’Active judging’ has been suggested as a way to enable substantive access to justice, putting the judicial officer into the role of helping litigants, particularly those without representation. Drawing on original empirical research, this chapter considers the role of judicial officers in supporting substantive access to justice and the promise and limits of the idea of active judging. The study involves observations of hearings and interviews with adjudicators in the New Zealand Tenancy Tribunal. Although adjudicators do significantly assist parties, an adjudicator's ability to help litigants in person (hereinafter ‘LiPs’) explain and present their claims is limited by the adjudicator's understanding of the principle of impartiality. Even in a forum specifically designed for the judicial officer to take an active role, adjudicators struggle to know how much assistance they can provide without breaching impartiality, sometimes resulting in resolutions that appear unjust or do not address all the issues between the parties. In the absence of additional support for LiPs or restructured hearings, the judicial role and the concept of impartiality need to be carefully reconceptualised if active judging is to provide the necessary support to achieve access to justice for LiPs.

Keywords: Active judging; Litigants in person; Self-represented litigants; Impartiality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781788978736
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