The Form of Forms: Everyday Enablers of Access to Justice
| Published date | 01 October 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09646639231172616 |
| Author | Aisling Ryan |
| Date | 01 October 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Special Section: Registering the Everyday: Documents, Bureaucracy, and the Socio-Legal |
The Form of Forms:
Everyday Enablers of
Access to Justice
Aisling Ryan
School of Law, College of Business and Law,
University College Cork, Ireland
Abstract
Forms are vehicles that register the everyday. A bureaucratic form starts a dialogue
between an individual and the State in a particular area of public administration. The vis-
ual design of bureaucratic forms shapes what is registered and how personal identity is
documented in the eyes of the State. This article is situated in the field of administrative
justice and argues that we must increase the scope for personal narrative in the design of
bureaucratic forms. Meers notes that there has been no sustained research into appli-
cation forms despite the importance of forms in the administration of the welfare
state. By drawing on sociological scholarship on registration and narrative together
with socio-legal scholarship on design, the ideas explored offers a novel and interdiscip-
linary approach to scholarship on the form of forms.
Keywords
Bureaucratic forms, administrative justice, registration, access to justice, design
Introduction
The significance of forms for modern living cannot be overemphasised. In this world,
‘nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes’(Franklin, 1789), but you
need to fill in a form for both, birth and everything else in between. A form can mean
very different things to people at either side of the process for which a form is being
used. For an applicant, a form is the start of a bureaucratic process, the means through
Corresponding author:
Aisling Ryan, School of Law, College of Business and Law, University College Cork, Aras na Laoi, Cork, Ireland.
Email: aislingryan@ucc.ie
Article
Social & Legal Studies
2023, Vol. 32(5) 690–713
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/09646639231172616
journals.sagepub.com/home/sls
which an individual seeks to assert a right or claim an entitlement. For a bureaucrat, a
form is a trigger for registering a claim and is often the basis on which a decision
maker will consider a claim. The particular problem explored in a case study below is
centred around the failure of a bureaucratic form to provide space or opportunity for indi-
viduals to outline their own narrative and personal experiences to the relevant public body
tasked with exercising a power. The filling in of a form is a crucial moment in the indi-
vidual–State relationship and the forms used to register claims and grievances can act as
either everyday enablers or everyday barriers to justice.
This article is situated in the field of administrative justice. The ’Design and
Registration’section reviews literature on design theory and registration. The ’Forms
as Vehicles of Registration’section explains how forms are mechanisms for registering
the everyday. The ’Redesigning Forms as Everyday Enablers of Access to Justice’
section offers a forward-looking perspective on how we might incorporate narrative to
design forms as everyday enablers of access to justice. The goal is to contribute to the
scholarship that seeks to improve first instance decision making in public administration.
This research ekes out space and recognition for personal narrative in bureaucratic forms.
A case study considers a form used by prisoners in Irish prisons to request a transfer to a
different country to serve the remainder of their sentence. While the case study focuses on
a form used in the Irish Prison Service, the interdisciplinary threads come together to
provide a framework to consider the form of forms across all areas of public administra-
tion. There are of course limitations of looking at the form of forms broadly across admin-
istration with just one case study. In each area of administration particular issues can arise
due to the contextual nature of public administration and the nature of the power being
exercised by bureaucrats (Donson and O’Donovan, 2015). Other variables include
what different entities need to register; plurality of system users (Brown et al., 2021); lit-
eracy levels; the significance of what is at stake; legal representation; whether a form is
being used at first instance or on appeal; where a form is being filled in or submitted (van
der Valk and Rogan, 2023); digitalisation of forms (Tomlinson, 2019; Tomlinson, 2020;
Tomlinson and Meers, 2022) and institutional culture (Thomas, 2022a).
The article uses a socio-legal methodology to explore the intersection of the visual
design of bureaucratic forms and everyday issues of justice. This research advances
the field by holding up bureaucratic forms as a place of law and is part of the body of
administrative justice scholarship that challenges the idea that law solely takes place in
the courts (Doyle and O’Brien, 2020; Harlow and Rawlings, 2022; Hertogh et al.,
2022). The author identifies bureaucratic forms as a place where law takes place,
perhaps at the lowest level of any legal process because the filling in and submission
of a form is the point in time of registration of the initial claim or grievance. Tracing
back through the decision-making process to the form originating the claim or grievance,
we see that lack of space for narrative in the form can lead to a misunderstanding between
the applicant and the decision maker. In this way, rather than enabling access to justice,
forms can be barriers to accessing justice. The core argument advanced on narrative and
bureaucratic forms is supported by sociological research on narrative and how the stories
we tell are central to our existence, allow us to make sense of the world and position our-
selves in space, place and time (O’Neill et al., 2015; Plummer, 2020). How we register
these stories is crucial to the operation of the administrative state. What follows is a
Ryan 691
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