法律扶助事務版圖的變遷與選擇──以英、澳比較為鏡

The Scope of Legal Aid Services: Lessons from the Comparative Study of England and Wales and Australia

我國法律扶助法2015年修正第10條，新增「推廣法律扶助、弱勢人權議題之教育」與「推動相關法令建置」為法扶會業務，強調整全的法律扶助應於個案救濟之外，加上法治教育與法律改革。究竟，為保障弱勢近用司法實現正義，法扶組織應從事的扶助事務為何？本文藉由回顧英文文獻，首先整理「法扶事務」範疇之演變。而後選取英、澳兩國作為案例，透過其法扶發展歷史凸顯「專注個案救濟」與「兼顧個案以外事務的整合式服務」兩種對立思維；並藉比較兩國發展，了解制度環境如何造就法扶組織事務版圖的不同樣貌，提醒我國法扶未來應致力形塑出有別於私人律師執業之法扶文化，並留意資源挹注、分配與管理的妥適性，俾實現個案救援與社會系統改革的雙重使命。

The most recent amendment in 2015 to Article 10 of the Legal Aid Act, Taiwan, states that 'promoting education with topics in legal aid, and human rights' and 'promoting the formulations of legal statutes relating to legal aid and human rights' are matters handled by the Legal Aid Foundation (LAF). This is in addition to the legal aid granted to individual clients in the forms of legal advice, minor assistance and representation. LAF has emphasised that this amendment provides a comprehensive scope of legal aid services. This includes public legal education and law reform. It is within this background, that this paper aims to investigate the scope of legal aid services in western countries and its development in the past century. By means of a literature review, this paper first introduces the changing scope of 'legal aid services' at different stages, and the reasoning behind it. Second, this paper takes England and Wales, and Australia as two case jurisdictions to present the tension between the two different approaches of legal aid services: 'individual case work only' and the integrated services combining case work and strategic work (i.e. education and law reform activities).The comparative study, analyses how the different systems and institutional environments significantly impact on the scope of legal aid services in the two jurisdictions. Research implications concerning legal aid culture and resource allocation are discussed in the final chapter for legal aid practitioners in Taiwan, for future practice and policy-making.