Uncivil Democracy

How Access to Justice Shapes Political Power

Jamila Michener, Mallory E. SoRelle

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9780691264455
  9780691264462
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691287256
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Advocacy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

How the civil legal system undermines the political lives of marginalized communities

Each year, as many as 250 million Americans face civil legal problems like eviction, debt collection, and substandard housing. These problems are disproportionately shouldered by racially and economically marginalized people, particularly women of color. Civil courts and legal aid organizations are supposed to protect their rights, yet more than 90 percent of low-income people receive inadequate or no legal assistance. Instead, access to justice is reserved for those who can afford its high price. For those who can’t, the repercussions can be devastating, from homelessness and loss of public benefits to broken families and diminished health. Uncivil Democracy looks at the US civil justice system through the eyes of the people whose very citizenship is indelibly shaped by it.

Jamila Michener and Mallory SoRelle show how civil legal problems, and the institutions meant to address them, greatly erode trust in the legal system among marginalized communities, undermining their broader sense of democratic citizenship and political standing. While legal representation offers vital protections, increased access to justice through an ever-growing supply of lawyers does not address the structural problems that generate demand for lawyers in the first place. Looking at cases involving unfair evictions and substandard housing, Michener and SoRelle demonstrate how community groups such as tenants’ unions can fill this justice gap and provide the means to build political power that transforms the conditions that create precarity.

Drawing on eye-opening qualitative evidence and a wealth of historical and survey data, Uncivil Democracy explains why collective organizing holds the greatest promise for altering the systems that create civil legal problems and exercising the political power necessary for meaningful change.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. “If the Community Isn’t Doing Good, You’re Not”: Power, Politics, and Access to Justice
• 2. “Every State Has Their Own Kind of System”: Mapping the Civil Legal Landscape
• 3. “We’re Not Being Heard”: How Civil Justice Problems Erode Democratic Citizenship
• 4. “I Feel Like They Should Be Doing More”: Rise and Retrenchment in the Policy Foundations of the Justice Gap
• 5. “The State Is Supposed to Help”: The Political Benefits of Procedural Justice
• 6. “Where Liberation Is Actually Going to Happen”: Legal Justice, Tenant Organizing, and Transformative Politics
• 7. “I’m Going to Change It for Someone Else”: The Future of Power and Access to Justice
• Quantitative Appendix
• Qualitative Appendix
• References
• Index