This is a symposium on access to justice, a symposium with contributions from quite a few distinguished experts. Here, at the outset of the conference, I want to set out some modest preliminary thoughts on what "access to justice" might mean, and comment on how access to justice has fared historically. We have to begin with some attempt to explain what we are talking about. What do we mean by "access to justice"? In order to answer that question, we have to ask some other, more basic, questions: who is supposed to have access; to what; and for what purpose?
