The three waves that Professor Cappelletti has identified represent more than a series of attempts at institutional reform. They also correspond -. to a succession of intellectual forays in which we can trace crucial developments of our understanding of law in society. As that understanding continues to grow (or perhaps only change), it may reveal to us some glimmerings of what a future fourth or fifth wave might be like. We might begin by examining what unites the three waves'the quest for access. Access is a spatial metaphor. It is a metaphor that has proved long-lived as well as congenial to many otherwise diverse reformers. It may be useful to unravel some of the presuppositions that are woven into this metaphor. Access to where? Where is the justice that we want to admit people to? Where does it reside? Whose is it to dispense? It would be a distortion, but perhaps a useful oversimplification, to conclude that the basic model of most inquiry into access to justice is, crudely, to get people and their grievances into court. This is too narrow: '"court" has to be enlarged to [ include a variety of remedial agencies. And "getting in" has to be enlarged to include equipping grievants with expert help to enable effective use of the agencies. And where agencies and complaints are mismatched, it extends to changing the character of the forum; and even to changing the character of the complainant, by providing means to recognize and aggregate diffuse claims. The Access to Justice Project is permeated by an admirable willijig- "ess to chailenge assumptions about institutional design. It has welcomed proposals to make the forum more suitable to the character of the dispute and the parties, and to make the disputants capable of using the forum. This notion of a good match between forum and dispute is set within a 2 framework of presuppositions about disputes and forums. Typically it is assumed that access should be to a forum external to the original social setting of the dispute, a location at which some specialized learning or expertise will be brought to bear. Remedies will be provided as prescribed in some body of authoritative learning and dispensed by experts who operate under the auspices of the state. Is the justice to which we seek access a product that is produced'or at least distributed'exclusively by the state? Such a view, which I shall for convenience label "legal centralism," is not an uncommon one among legal professionals. I submit that the next wave of Access to Justice inquiry should explore the possibility that this legal central ist model is deficient. For the moment, I want to show how several lines of social research on law lead me to questions its descriptive adequacy. I will then suggest the implications for access to justice of abandoning the legal centralist paradigm.