Social Inequality and Access to Justice: RonclOnia's Itinerant Rapid Justice Experience

This paper addresses the issue of access to justice for the population affected by social inequalities. In order to guarantee the right of access to justice, the Brazilian legislation grants to the disadvantaged population exemption of costs and free legal aid that is carried out through the Public Defender's Office or through agreements with OAB Brazilian Bar Association or Law Faculties. However, for a portion of the population, this is not enough to guarantee access to justice. Because of Social inequality great part of the people have no knowledge of what rights they have, and not enough money to seek the competent bodies to assist them. This population does not have civil documents most of time, and they lack financial resources to come to the places that can provide copies of documents. Part of them don't have the clothes and shoes necessary to enter the judiciary buildings. Many people do not even have civil documents needed to authorize them to enter court, and their marginality potentializes social inequalities and creates a distance between them and the Judiciary. The present study aims to verify the impact of the Itinerant Rapid Justice, created by the Court of Justice of the State of RondOnia, in the lives of these people and in the promotion of human rights and citizenship, under the conceptual prism of John Rawls. The research method has a deductive approach, whose theoretical revision is anchored in generalizable approaches, with the use of a case study as an empirical research strategy. The unit of analysis was the TJRO, where the empirical data of the statistical reports were collected. Our preliminary results indicate that initiatives like the Itinerant Rapid Justice have great impact in the lives of disadvantaged people.