ACCESS TO JUSTICE AND INEVITABLE REFORMS TO THE CIVIL JUSTICE SYSTEM

REFLECTIONS ON CASE MANAGEMENT AND LEGAL AID IN TANZANIA

Abstract

The article examines two aspects of the on-going reform to civil justice in Tanzania which are the introduction of case management and the state of the legal aid services. It states that any access to justice can only be achieved if the system provides legal aid services to indigents or those of slender means as well as providing the necessary resources to defend legal rights or to prosecute his or her case in order to bring equality among the parties to a dispute. To ensure timely justice, case management is central to effectively reduce the legal costs of civil litigation, delays, formality, technicality and complexities of the legal process. The article borrows experiences from other commonwealth jurisdictions where case management has been instituted such as Great Britain and Singapore. Tanzania has a common law adversarial system for its civil justice system. Although the article is by no means a comprehensive study of the performance of the judiciary in Tanzania it provides a useful reflection of the civil justice system in Tanzania.