The injustices wrought by unequal access to the legal system pose a direct threat to the rule of law, yet such injustices are widespread in England and elsewhere. Lawyers regularly criticise governments for a lack of funding for the legal system, but the private market for delivering legal services receives much less scrutiny. A private market for legal resources is antithetical to equal justice because it makes the outcome of cases turn on arbitrary factors such as wealth. The solution, according to Wilmot-Smith in his book Equal Justice, is to socialise the allocation of legal services so that the rich cannot buy the best lawyers, and to prevent them from contracting out of this public system by making private arbitrations unenforceable. This review article argues that Wilmot-Smith’s thesis is persuasive, but there might also be second-best solutions that could deliver greater legal equality at lower cost.

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我们愿意为平等正义的梦想付出什么代价？

不平等进入法律体系造成的不公正对法治构成直接威胁，但这种不公正现象在英格兰和其他地方普遍存在。律师经常批评政府缺乏法律体系的资金，但提供法律服务的私人市场受到的审查要少得多。法律资源的私人市场与平等正义背道而驰，因为它使案件的结果转向财富等任意因素。根据 Wilmot-Smith 在他的《平等正义》一书中的说法，解决方案是将法律服务的分配社会化，这样富人就无法购买最好的律师，并通过使私人仲裁无法执行来防止他们从这个公共系统中承包出去。这篇评论文章认为 Wilmot-Smith 的论文很有说服力，