Legal Aid Cuts: A Criminal Justice Pain Chain

In England and Wales “justice for all” is a legal principle that can be traced back to 1215 in Magna Carta, which states: “We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.”1 Also, according to article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, “everyone has the right to a fair trial ...to defend himself in person or through legal assistance of his own choosing or, if he has not sufficient means to pay for legal assistance, to be given it free when the interests of justice so require;’’2 However, the repeated cuts on legal aid seem to become a burden to this fundamental right.3 To understand this though, it has to be shown what legal aid is, how it works, how it has affected the Criminal Justice System and what the intricacies that have taken place, in relation to this matter are