Grievance Redress and the Judiciary

Abstract

Chapter 6 explains why the judiciary, when assessing the State’s measures for furthering access to justice, should focus on the RTE grievance redress system, and should order that it be improved in order to compensate for the current lack of access to justice. Strategic PIL litigation may play an important role. The chapter shows what alterations are necessary in order for the system to provide adequate and effective means of enforcement. It shall be concluded that a system of ‘micromanagement’ through grievance redress at the ‘bottom’, with right-bearers approaching the redress bodies themselves, and ‘macromanagement’ of systemic deficiencies through adjudication in the higher judiciary at the ‘top’, with advocacy groups raising issues at that level, might actually be superior to the system that was originally conceived by the Constitution.