The Right to Access to Justice: Its Conceptual Architecture

The right to access to justice is a global issue—both theoretically and practically. From a theoretical perspective, the right to access to justice is a central component of the web of concepts that constitutes the modern State. This right, along with principles like separation of powers, legality, and liberty—and rights like the rights to vote, equality, and expression—form a central part of the modern legal and political imagination.1 These categories shape the axes that construct the horizon of understanding that subjects committed to enlightened modernity are implicitly or explicitly immersed. These categories are also the lenses through which the legal and political world is constructed and interpreted by subjects committed to enlightened modernity. The right to access to justice occupies a central place in this horizon of understanding: it makes explicit the reason why abstract, autonomous, rational subjects create the State and conceive of the core function that it should fulfill, this is, resolving conflicts between individuals and keeping the peace.2 This right is generally understood as the capacity of all members of a political community to call upon the State to solve their differences impartially and efficiently.3