Buy Legal Aid | Law Books , our publication, New Arrivals, A Social Legal Perspective
Free legal aid to the poor and marginalized members of the society is now viewed as a tool to empower them to use the power of the law to advance their rights and interests as citizens and as economic actors. Parliament enacted the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 in order to give effect to Article 39-A of the Constitution to extend free legal aid, to ensure that the legal system promotes justice on the basis of equal opportunity. Those entitled to free legal services are members of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, women, children, persons with disability, victims of ethnic violence, industrial workmen, persons in custody etc. The right to free legal Aid is, therefore, clearly an essential ingredient of "reasonable, fair and just", procedure for a person accused of an offence and it must be held implicit in the guarantee fo Article 21. This is a constitutional right of every accused parson who is unable engage a lawyer and secure legal services on account of reasons such as POVERTY, indigence or incommunicado situation and the State is under a mandate to provide a lawyer to an accused person if the circumstances of the case and the needs of justice so require, provided of course the accused person does not object to the provision of such lawyer. The book raises the issue of access to justice and fee legal aid as enshrined in Indian Constitution. This book is a well researched and documented contribution to legal academia and for the civil society organizations. This book would particularly inspire the young advocates and law students to take up issues of access to justice and this would equally serve as ready recover for legal practitioners. The beauty of this book is that it will be of good use to everyone in the profession of Law who would be interested in understanding access to justice and legal aid through judicial process.