| Legal aid is the core factor to ensure that the poor and vulnerable groups have access to justice, and it is a judicial remedy system which is generally used by many countries in the world as well as an important part of the judicial system with Chinese characteristics. In Western developed countries with an adequate legal system, legal aid system has been developed for nearly 500 years, and it has accumulated rich experience in long historical process of providing legal assistance for the poor and vulnerable groups. In China, legal aid system has only been established for 20 years, thus we need to fully understand the common rules of establishment and development of the world’s legal aid system, and to explore and research the world, especially the development history, experience and practice of legal aid system in Western developed countries with an adequate legal system. This will offer a certain model significance to expanding ideas of how to establish and develop legal aid system in our country.This paper is divided into five parts. Chapter one is the introduction of legal aid. Firstly, it compared the concepts of legal aid in China and introduced the rule of Legal Aid Act in the US, France and South Korea. The second part introduced the development of legal aid system and how it has been established and developed in China. Legal aid system originates in the United Kingdom in 1495, and the development of modern legal aid system mainly went through two stages: "legal aid based on charity" and "legal aid based on rights". China began to study and gradually built up legal aid system from the beginning of 1994.Chapter two is about the comparative research of several major problems of legal aid system. It mainly compared and analyzed legal aid institution setting, qualifications of recipient, scopes, delivery models, guarantee fundsand quality management at home and abroad to make further identification of the differences of legal aid system between China and other countries and the main existing problems.Chapter three is the introduction of the latest developments and trends of legal aid in some countries and regions. The United Kingdom, the United States and Norway and other countries reformed something to resolve a series problems such as the scope of legal aid, quality control and financial resource shrinking. To deal with the status quo of legal aid, these countries have taken positive response measures.Chapter four offered suggestions and references for development of legal aid system in China through a comparative study of legal aid system in different countries. It is primarily about analysis and consideration of six aspects as following: to unify legal aid institution setting, to reasonably establish legal aid service standards, to expand legal aid coverage, to diversify legal aid service provided, to strengthen guarantee and management of legal aid fund and to improve quality management system of legal aid in China.Conclusion section further elaborated the function and meaning of legal aid system in every aspect of citizens’ legitimate rights and interests safeguard, realization of judicial justice, maintenance of social stability and so on. In China, the legal aid system with Chinese characteristics is not perfect, and the author came up with better reference to promote the development of legal aid work in China through analysis and discussion of the new trends and developments of the world’s legal aid work. |
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