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The new Centre is led by the School of Law and Justice at the University of Liverpool. The £5.8 million Centre includes a £4.1 million investment by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, and is the largest grant it has ever awarded to a Law School. This is in response to the AHRC’s national call for proposals to establish a Centre for Law and Social Justice. 

The Centre for People’s Justice is a coalition of 45 organisations from community, business, philanthropic, cultural, artistic, charitable, legal, government and university sectors. It will work across the UK in partnership with the Universities of Glasgow, Sheffield, Swansea, Wrexham, Ulster and the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. 

The Director of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS), Professor Carl Stychin, said:  

“I am excited that IALS was invited to join this application and that it has been successful in being awarded AHRC funding following an incredibly competitive process. As a national resource for the promotion and facilitation of legal research with a commitment to national research training, IALS looks forward to partnering on the development of the Centre.” 

Collaborating with household names such as The Big Issue, Citizens Advice, National Museums Liverpool and The Royal Shakespeare Company, the Centre will develop a creative programme of research and training aimed at connecting the public more closely with the ways in which the law is made, improving accountability for how the law is put into practice, and enhancing people’s understanding of their legal rights.  

The Centre will take a grassroots approach, empowering communities to prioritise and co-produce research that responds to some of the most pressing social and legal issues including food insecurity, low-waged work, tackling violence and conflict and children’s rights.  For example, an initial project, ‘The Brown Envelope Project’, will focus on the way in which the public understand and respond to official correspondence from the authorities.  

Everyday law and legal processes are often experienced by the public as a letter delivered in a brown envelope through their front door, for example about an unpaid energy bill, benefits’ information or a parking fine. The charity Citizens Advice has highlighted how such letters can invoke fear, confusion and distress, particularly for those with literacy, language, health difficulties, or those under severe financial pressure. It can mean people avoid engaging with the problem, which leads to further difficulties and money being spent on administration costs that could be better directed elsewhere. 

The research will find out about how people respond to ‘brown envelope’ letters. It will involve the public in designing solutions in which information is clearer, more effective and can better support people to address problems, working with government offices and energy companies to identify how these public recommendations could be implemented. 

The Centre for People’s Justice is closely aligned to the IALS Library’s ongoing commitment to social justice and decolonisation, led by Librarian, Marilyn Clarke, and with the new , led by Professor Anat Rosenberg. In addition, working in collaboration with academics in the School of Advanced Study, IALS is ideally positioned to engage with those researchers across the arts and humanities with a commitment to social justice and social change.