and due process of law.47 In her seminal work, Khair asserts that the fundamental purposes of providing access to justice are to ensure that every person is able to invoke the legal process for redress, irrespective of social or economic status or other incapacity; and also to ensure that every person receives just and fair treatment within the legal system.48 However, the concept of access to justice developed through phases of reforms with shifts in focus. As Cranston traces, access to justice reforms to three distinct waves: the first wave began in the early 1960s involving the extension of legal aid; the second wave concentrated on the representation of diffuse or collective interests, for example, consumers and environmentalists, and involved standing rules, multi-party actions and so on, and the third wave, incorporating elements from the earlier waves, went on to expand legal representation and improve adjudicative procedures to accommodate different types of litigations and issues.49 According to Khair, these initiatives, in essence, were concerned with ensuring ‘social access’ by making individuals and groups aware of their legal rights and enabling them to obtain legal services to invoke those rights.50 Ideally, the legal system is meant to operate as a premise 49 R Cranston, “Access to Justice in South and South-East Asia,” in Julio Faundez (ed), Good Governance and Law, Legal and Institutional Reform in Developing Countries (London: MacMillan Press Ltd., 1997), 233. 50 Khair, Legal Empowerment for the Poor, 5. 44