⁵AJA C Repo rt, 7-9.      ⁶Id, 2.      ⁷Id, 3. 3 It may also, in a slightly wider sense, mean access to the courts generally and not just the civil justice system. The Judge then goes on to say that the 1994 AJAC Report⁵ took access to justice to mean 3 things: equality of access to legal services, national  equity,  and  equality  before  the  law,  meaning  the  removal  of  barriers creating or exacerbating dependency and disempowerment.⁶ There is an even wider context identified in the Judge’s p aper, that is, participation in private and public processes not necessarily limited to the democratic process of law-making.⁷ 4 In this paper, I treat access to justice as a concept at the wider end of the spectrum of meanings, but necessarily also embracing the narrower meanings. In a free and democratic society under the rule of law, citizens must know what are their rights and obligations in order to do business, to access the services provided by the State, to acquire skills and knowledge, to acquire and dispose of property, to get resolution of disputes, to engage with central and local government, to enter relationships, to move about, to communicate, to work and sustain themselves, and to do whatever else they might wish. They must also know the limitations on their actions and what the sanctions are if their conduct harms others. They must be capable of influencing changes  in  the  laws  that  govern  them  through  participation  in  the  law-making processes. 5 A free and democratic society depends on the integrity of its laws, that is, that they embody fundamental legal principles, conform with the international obligations of the particular country, and are not harsh, oppressive, discriminatory, or outdated. Respect for the law is fundamental to good order and government. This is the sense in which I suggest commitment to the rule of law has to be viewed, not confined to