The core principle of the rule of law under a democratic, egalitarian system is that the law applies uniformly and protects all those who live under it. However, in recent years, thanks to cuts in legal aid (scope and fees), there has been a decrease in the availability of legal advice to help people solve their problems, but this has been coupled with an increase in the complexity of legislation. Because more individuals will need to defend their own rights, accessibility of the law itself will become vital to the accessibility of justice more broadly.

Access to justice through the traditional method of representation by a lawyer in court has been moving out of reach for some time.1Litigants in person: the rise of the self-represented litigant in civil and family cases in England and Wales, House of Commons Library Briefing Paper No 07113, 14 January 2016, page 6. If legal aid is cut back even further and more areas fall out of scope, more individuals – especially those who are already more vulnerable2Cuts that hurt: the impact of legal aid cuts in England on access to justice, Amnesty International, October 2016, pages 10, 13 and 17. – will be left without the protection afforded by lawyers. Stop-gap measures like exceptional case funding in immigration cases are too complex for individuals to navigate themselves.3Kirsten Hudak and Dr Emma Marshall, The case for broadening the scope of immigration legal aid, Public Law Project, April 2021, page 4. We might see other legislation – including the Bill of Rights Bill – brought back, which would weaken access to human rights protections across the board.4Kartik Raj, ‘The UK government’s Bill of Wrongs’, Human Rights Watch, 22 June 2022.

There is currently legislation in the works – the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill – that would introduce even more complexity into the rewriting of British law post-Brexit, bringing with it unnecessary uncertainty.5Public Law Project second reading briefing on the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, October 2022, pages 8–9. This increased complexity will also increase the need for access to the experts. Take, for example, the complexity of the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS): there are multiple different avenues for legitimisation of status for those for whom it is not immediately obvious, as well as complexity in the cases of children leaving care, members of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, and prisoners,6Madeleine Sumption and Mariña Fernández-Reino, Unsettled status – 2020: which EU citizens are at risk of failing to secure their rights after Brexit?, The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, 24 September 2020. among others. Vulnerable people are making vital applications with little or no access to legal support and without a clear understanding of the parameters as set out by the Home Office.7Kuba Jablonowski and Patrycja Pinkowska, Vulnerability in the EU Settlement Scheme: looking back, going forward – a review of evidence from Law Centres’ casework, Law Centres Network, 21 July 2021, pages 10–12. A simpler set of guidelines to accompany a simpler piece of legislation would increase the accessibility of the EUSS.

As access to legal advice and representation is decreasing, the law should perhaps cease to be seen as an instrument that can only be understood and used by experts, even though it is meant to apply to all. After all, those who make the laws do not always come to law-making through academia or legal practice.8Social background of MPs 1979–2019, House of Commons Library Research Briefing No 7483, 15 February 2022. A recent analysis of the pattern of judgments made at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) noted that more judges have, over the years, come to the court from the ranks of the civil service than directly from the law.9Urška Šadl and Suvi Sankari, ‘Why did the citizenship jurisprudence change?’, in Daniel Thym (ed), Questioning EU citizenship: judges and the limits of free movement and solidarity in the EU, Bloomsbury, April 2020.

While debate continues about the role of the courts and the methods of appointing judges, a legal system that prioritises more easily comprehensible law would benefit all of us. If people will have to defend their rights themselves because access to legal advice and representation is diminishing, then the ability to access justice will come to be determined by the accessibility of the law itself.