THE ROLE OF LAW CLINICS IN EXPANDING HUMAN RIGHTS AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE: A CASE STUDY OF THE NIGERIAN LAW SCHOOL, YENAGOA CAMPUS LAW CLINIC
Abstract
Introduction
Justice has been an ideal which generations of scholars have pondered and still ponder as they try to characterize or give it meaning to it, yet the concept of justice remains elusive, access to justice has equally remained elusive for some classes of persons in societies that are vulnerable; too poor, too insignificant or too unimportant for their fundamental human rights to be protected or to accorded unfettered access to justice.
In this paper we shall not concern ourselves with the additional concept of justice as philosophical or jurisprudential construct or a full discussion of Human Rights. We shall limit our discussion to the efforts at the Nigerian Law School, using Yenagoa law clinic as case study at conscientising Law school students/ aspirants to the plight of very poor, weak and vulnerable persons in society who suffer abuses, inhuman and degrading treatments both in their public and private lives merely because they have been denied access to justice. Consequently, they are also denied protection of the law merely because of the impotence brought upon them because they are very poor, weak, vulnerable or just too timorous to be accorded their right to protection of Law. The Law Clinic is thereby used as a tool for the expansion of the tent of justice to them. This hopefully will produce for the future, a new generation of lawyers and jurists in Nigeria, who will be mindful of the fundamental human rights of all; rich or poor, notable and important or weak and vulnerable to the due process of law and justice. The training would also help create for the future a generation of lawyers who would use their positions as lawyers (ministers in the temple of Justice1) to ensuring they humanize justice by allowing all unfettered access to her thereby expanding human rights and access to justice of all citizens as envisaged by the Nigerian Constitution.2
