Although improving
access to justice has become a priority for members of the legal community, the
focus has largely been on the impact that economic disparity has on the justice
gap. To truly address this pressing issue, the conversation must expand to
address marginalized groups and the systems that facilitate and encourage their
marginalization in the legal system. This panel will examine how issues of race
and ethnicity impact access to civil and criminal justice, how the intersection
of race and poverty impact the justice gap, and how defeating substantive and
procedural hurdles that impede justice requires meaningful and creative
solutions. The panel will discuss various concrete examples of substantive and
procedural hurdles that deny marginalized minority groups access to justice,
including barriers to class actions, procedural rules on notice, implicit bias,
prosecutorial discretion, and defunding of legal aid. This panel will encourage
the development of new or alternative theories to address the substantive and
procedural hurdles that marginalized minority groups have dealt with for
decades.