Towards a Theory of Legitimate Access: Morally Legitimate Authority and the Right of Citizens to Access the Civil Justice System

Abstract:     
In this essay, I consider the issue of what resources the state is morally obligated to provide to ensure citizen access to the civil justice system. I begin by describing the general problem of morally legitimate authority and how it bears on what I will call the problem of access as it pertains to the civil justice system. I then identify three different general approaches to the general problem of morally legitimate authority and argue that none of these approaches warrants thinking that the state is morally obligated to provide each citizen with perfectly equal access to the civil justice system. I conclude by arguing that the three approaches to legitimacy converge on two principles: one that defines an affirmative obligation (i.e., the Reasonable Access Principle) to provide to each citizen what is minimally necessary to develop and defend a plausible legal position and one that defines a negative obligation (i.e., the Equality Principle) to refrain from restricting access to the civil justice system for reasons that deny the equality of every moral person.

Keywords: Legitimacy, authority, rights, access, civil justice

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