Transformations in the Capitalist State: The Development of Legal Aid and Legal Clinics in Canada

Abstract

This paper provides a conjunctural analysis of the development of legal aid programmes and clinics in postwar Canada. It argues that changing conditions of state formation have combined with struggles over state regulation to shape clinic policies and services in provinces like Ontario. This approach to explanation is geographic in its emphasis on the causes of state formation in specific regions, and in its concern with spatial variations in experiences of state regulation and conditions of struggle over policies and procedures. The emergence of legal aid and legal clinics in Canada is explained as the outcome of struggles to increase access to legal services in an era of economic crisis, growing dependency on state assistance programmes, and increased legal regulation of social relations and practices. The formation of a specific regulatory apparatus in Ontario is linked to struggles to secure provincial funding of independent clinics and over the manner of state regulation of clinic services. Current disputes over state policy and organizing strategies illustrate significant political divisions within Ontario's clinic movement. These in turn reflect important geographic variations in clinic development, aims and experiences of state formation.