Decentering Law through Public Legal Education

• Main Authors: Lisa Wintersteiger, Tara Mulqueen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law 2017-12-01
• Series: Oñati Socio-Legal Series
• Subjects: Public legal education; juridification; legal need
• Online Access: http://opo.iisj.net/index.php/osls/article/view/867

Public legal education (PLE) has received renewed attention in the context of deregulation and recent cuts to publicly funded legal assistance in the UK. However, while PLE practices can support access to justice and supplement provision, they also risk placing the burden of responsibility for coping with legal problems on those most in need of support. In this paper we will argue this tension plays on a false dichotomy between education and advice, one that we suggest arises partly as a consequence of the discourse of legal need, in which law can come to seem like the best or the only way of framing social relations. However PLE works an important <em>boundary of law</em>: the division between who can know, speak about and access the law, and who cannot. As such, we argue that it can critically decenter the law and expose law&rsquo;s political contingency..<br /><br /> Si bien la pr&aacute;ctica de la Educaci&oacute;n Jur&iacute;dica P&uacute;blica (EJP) puede ayudar a acceder a la justicia y complementar sus servicios, tambi&eacute;n presenta el riesgo de cargar a los necesitados de ayuda con la responsabilidad de lidiar con los problemas legales. En este art&iacute;culo, argumentaremos que esa tensi&oacute;n se alimenta de una falsa dicotom&iacute;a entre educaci&oacute;n y asistencia, dicotom&iacute;a que, en nuestra opini&oacute;n, surge en parte como consecuencia del discurso de la necesidad jur&iacute;dica, en el cual el derecho viene a presentarse como la mejor o la &uacute;nica manera de enmarcar las relaciones sociales. Sin embargo, la EJP desempe&ntilde;a un papel importante en un l&iacute;mite de la legalidad: el que existe entre los que conocen, tratan y acceden al derecho, y aquellos que no. As&iacute; pues, argumentamos que puede descentralizar de forma cr&iacute;tica el derecho y exponer la contingencia pol&iacute;tica del derecho.<br /><br /><strong>DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN:</strong> <a href="http://ssrn.com/abstract=3058991" target="_blank">http://ssrn.com/abstract=3058991</a>