Self-Represented Litigation and Meaningful Access to Justice in Aotearoa and Samoa

Date
2023-01-23
Authors
Fa’amatuainu, Bridget
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Abstract

More than a decade ago, the first exploratory study into the experiences of Self-Represented Litigants in Aotearoa (New Zealand) recommended the need for more cultural perspectives in this area of research. This article makes a timely contribution to building this knowledge base while identifying some of the gaps, attitudes, intersectional experiences and challenges faced by Pacific communities within their respective cross-cultural contexts in response to Aotearoa’s justice system. As a starting point, we explore the existing framework of self-represented litigation in Aotearoa as well as some of the key limitations to highlight how responsive it is to cultural and systemic issues of bias. This article further explicates key principles from a customary approach used in Samoa to demonstrate how it may help facilitate meaningful engagement across diasporic Pan-Pacific communities to further enhance cross-cultural litigation in the civil justice system of Aotearoa—a largely under-theorised area.

Description
Keywords
47 Language, Communication and Culture , 4702 Cultural Studies , 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions , 2002 Cultural Studies , 4702 Cultural studies , access , custom , justice , law , Samoa , Self-Represented Litigants (SRLs)
Source
AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, ISSN: 1177-1801 (Print); 1174-1740 (Online), SAGE Publications, 19(1), 13-22. doi: 10.1177/11771801221145843
Rights statement
© 2023 Sage Publications. Under Sage's Green Open Access policy, the Accepted Version of the article may be posted in the author's institutional repository and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses.