Economic Justice

About: Economic Justice is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 41600 publications have been published within this topic receiving 661535 citations.

The Failure of Popular Justice in Uganda: Local Councils and Women’s Property Rights

Abstract: Advocates of alternative dispute resolution argue that informal community-based institutions are better placed to provide inexpensive expedient and culturally appropriate forms of justice. In 1988 the Ugandan government extended judicial capacity to local councils (LCs) on similar grounds. Drawing on attempts by women in southwestern Uganda to use the LCs to adjudicate property disputes this article investigates why popular justice has failed to protect the customary property rights of women. The gap between theory and practice arises out of misconceptions of community. The tendency to ascribe a morality and autonomy to local spaces obscures the ability of elites to use informal institutions for purposes of social control. In the light of womens attempts to escape the "rule of persons" and to seek out arbiters whom they associate with the rule of law it can be argued that the utility of the state to ordinary Ugandans should be reconsidered. (authors)

Difficult choices in the new post- conflict agenda: the international community in Rwanda after the genocide

Abstract: Since the genocide, development agencies have spent tens of millions of dollars in Rwanda on justice, governance, security and reconciliation - issues they used to consider far beyond their mandate until very recently. As a result, Rwanda has emerged as one of the countries where the new postconflict agenda is being most strongly implemented, under extremely difficult conditions. An analysis of donor behaviour in two high politics areas - the nature of the government and justice - shows that deep and unresolved ethical problems exist with this post-conflict agenda. Lack of information and understanding, conflicts between goals and principles, the difficulty of associating the people concerned in an equitable manner - all these and other issues render unclear the ethical basis upon which donors can base decisions which often have life and death implications for thousands of people.

Access to Civil Justice and Race, Class, and Gender Inequality

Abstract: Access to civil justice is a perspective on the experiences that people have with civil justice events, organizations, or institutions. It focuses on who is able or willing to use civil law and law-like processes and institutions (who has access) and with what results (who receives what kinds of justice). This article reviews what we know about access to civil justice and race, social class, and gender inequality. Three classes of mechanisms through which inequality may be reproduced or exacerbated emerge: the unequal distribution of resources and costs, groups' distinct subjective orientations to law or to their experiences, and differential institutionalization of group or individual interests. Evidence reveals that civil justice experiences can be an important engine in reproducing inequalities and deserve greater attention from inequality scholars. However, the inequality-conserving picture in part reflects scholars' past choices about what to study: Much research has focused narrowly on the use of formal legal means to solve problems or advance interests, or it has considered the experience only of relatively resource-poor, lower status, or otherwise less privileged groups. Thus, we often lack the information necessary to compare systematically groups' experiences to each other or the impact of law to that of other means of managing conflicts or repairing harm.