Judicial Procedural Involvement (JPI): A Metric for Judges’ Role in Civil Litigation,Settlement, and Access to Justice

We examine judges’ role in civil litigation by studying empirically the relationship between judicial procedural involvement (JPI) and lawsuits’ mode of disposition (MoD). Furthermore, we propose JPI as a metric for the allocation of judicial attention to litigants. Applying the framework to Israeli trial court data, we find that 60 per cent of cases included JPI (through hearings and rulings on motions) whereas 40 per cent involved only the court's institutional function. By juxtaposing JPI and MoD data, we shed light on the scope of judicial involvement in settlements, the ratio between judges’ normative public-life function and their problem-solving function, and other pertinent questions. Since nowadays lawsuits are rarely adjudicated, trial rates are low, and litigants in person (pro se litigants) are common, we argue that access to justice should also be construed in terms of access to judicial attention throughout the proceeding, which is readily measurable through JPI.     

HOW COURTS HELP YOU HELP YOURSELF

This note is the result of an in-depth analysis of existing state judiciary websites and how they have and will continue to affect self-represented divorce litigants in the United States. It surveys all existing state court websites and examines what resources they provide to pro se litigantsd. It also touches on private divorce-related websites and offers some comments about their utility to pro se litigants as an alternative and a supplement to court-based websites. This note calls for courts to adopt programs and policies that facilitate the process of getting a divorce for those who choose to represent themselves, and make those programs and policies available to the pro se litigant via the Internet.     

THE SELF‐REPRESENTED LITIGANT: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE BENCH AND BAR

It is widely accepted that the number of self‐represented litigants has skyrocketed nationwide, especially in family law cases. Although nationwide comprehensive data on the number of self‐represented litigants do not exist, anecdotal evidence supports the belief that self‐representation is increasing. The challenge for courts and the entire legal profession is how to respond. Most observers in Indiana would agree that the traditional model of family law litigation—both spouses represented by lawyers settling their disputes before a judge—is no longer the norm in family law cases. Judges face a dilemma: assisting a self‐represented litigant to level the playing field against a represented party is seen by many as violating impartiality, even if the assistance is rendered to create a just result. In an effort to address the situation, the Indiana Supreme Court created the Pro Se Advisory Committee in April 2001. This article explores the long‐range implications of the issue of self‐represented litigants on Indiana's court system in hope that it will provide some insight for other jurisdictions. The first part of the article addresses the numbers of self‐represented litigants by tracking growth or declines in self‐represented cases and assessing whether there are any pockets of self‐represented litigants geographically or in certain case types. The second part of the article puts Indiana into context with the rest of the nation and reviews national trends. The third section reviews Indiana's response to self‐represented litigants over the last decade. The fourth section reviews current and ongoing projects in Indiana. The article concludes that the issue of self‐represented litigants will not fade away and that the challenge that guides the legal profession is how we provide equal access to justice for all who enter our courthouses.     

Can Online Courts Promote Access to Justice? A Case Study of the Internet Courts in China

The right to access the courts is a basic human right in civilised societies, but the current legal system is unfriendly and often unaffordable for the victims of e-commerce disputes and copyright infringements seeking access to justice. Therefore, how to design a judicial system that is more accessible for the aforementioned victims has become a critical legal point of contention in the digital economy era. In particular, it is not easy to provide solid evidence of consumer disputes or copyright infringements on the Internet because the electronic evidence stored on the current centralised database has data security and trust problems. In response to this challenge, China established three Internet Courts in 2017 to move dispute resolution for e-commerce disputes and copyright infringements from the physical courts to the Internet. All the proceedings in these Internet Courts are conducted on the Internet, so the time and expenses of the litigants can be largely reduced. Most notably, these Internet Courts accept the use of blockchain as a method of securing evidence, to overcome the risks that evidence stored on the Internet can be hacked or falsified. The notion of an Internet Court, which substantially enhances popular access to justice, is a significant judicial innovation. It is of special significance for those lawsuits with small value claims and online evidence, and in which the parties are separated by long distances. However, these Internet Courts leave much to reflect on, including whether due process can be guaranteed, whether public trial can be fully implemented, and whether blockchain-based evidence is absolutely admissible. Even so, this article argues that true justice is not only to pursue absolute correctness of judgements, but that true justice should also strike a balance between the correctness and efficiency of trials. For this reason, Internet Courts may yet establish a new judicial paradigm to pursue a balance between correctness, time, and cost.     

PRO SE DIVORCE LITIGANTS

With the increased number of divorce litigants appearing pro se in the past century, trial court judges and court personnel are forced to deal with their conflicting obligations with more frequency. It is virtually impossible for a trial court judge to ensure all litigants have a fair and meaningful trial without compromising their neutrality. Likewise, court personnel are allowed to give out legal information but not legal advice, with the definition of legal information and advice not neatly packaged into two separate and distinct categories. Consequently, changes must be made. This note suggests various solutions that can be imposed to either reevaluate the role of trial court judges and court personnel so that they no longer have conflicting obligations and are able to accommodate the needs of the pro se litigants or implement services that can provide pro se litigants with other avenues of obtaining information and assistance.     

司法的限度：在司法能动与司法克制之间

我国法院从司法改革初期积极扩张司法权的一端,转变到面对社会矛盾复杂性而采取自我限缩策略的另一端,暴露出司法权运作边界模糊的问题。社会需求决定了司法的供给,但司法权的能力是有限的,其机能的发挥有赖于一定的条件,而且当事人人数的多少、案件的复杂程度等都会影响司法权的能力。司法权应当恪守自己的边界。对超越自身能力的事情保持克制,是司法权威的必要保证。     

THE BEST SEAT IN THE HOUSE: THE COURT ASSIGNMENT AND JUDICIAL SATISFACTION

A survey of 355 judges examined the differences in judicial satisfaction between those assigned to problem-solving courts—such as drug treatment and unified family—and judges in other more traditional assignments such as family law and criminal courts. The unified family court systems, like drug treatment courts, have generally adopted the principles of therapeutic jurisprudence. Significant differences were found on each of the three survey scales: (1) helpfulness, (2) attitude toward litigants, and (3) positive effects of assignment. The judges who were in the problem-solving courts (drug treatment and unified family court) scored higher on all three scales than those who were not (traditional family and criminal court). The group of problem-solving court judges consistently scored higher than the other group of judges, with the drug treatment court judges scoring the highest. The group of traditional criminal court and family court judges scored less positively, with the criminal court judges having the lowest scores. The problem-solving court judges were more likely to report believing that the role of the court should include helping litigants address the problems that brought them there and were more likely to observe positive changes in the litigants. They were also more likely to believe that litigants are motivated to change and are able to do so. They felt more respected by the litigants and were more likely to think that the litigants were grateful for help they received. The problem-solving court judges were also more likely to report being happy in their assignments and to believe that these assignments have a positive emotional effect on them.     

THE PRESS AND THE JUDICIARY： COURT AND JUDICIAL REPORTS IN THE PREss IN ENGLAND AND WALES

Western scholars have argued that image making and image management are a preoccupation of the judiciary. Images of the judiciary may take a variety of forms and be produced for kinds of audiences. One form of judicial image making and image management is live performances in the courtroom and other court settings. Another is the written judgment where the preoccupation is the style of the written text. Press and other mass media reports of judicial activity are another. The audience for judicial images is equally diverse, from fellow judges, lawyers in the courts and the wider legal community, the litigants before the courts to the executive, legislature and the public both in the courtroom and beyond. The image of the judiciary that is available to the public has a particular significance in Western rule of law democracies. As a general rule courts and the judiciary are required to operate in public and their activities must be open to public scrutiny. A recent policy manifestation of this goal is debated about confidence in the justice system and initiatives designed to improve confidence. In the majority of cases public scrutiny of judicial activity and public confidence in the judiciary relies upon the media. Objective and accurate press and media reports play a key role in shaping public understanding of the judiciary and generating or undermining confidence in that institution. Reports in regional and national newspapers have long been an important source of information, shaping public knowledge and facilitating public scrutiny of the justice system. In the UK, there is almost no scholarship on these representations past or present. The result is little known about the representation of the courts and the judiciary in press reports. Little is known about what the diligent reader of these reports can learn about judicial activity. The aim of this article is to take a first step towards changing that state of affairs. It uses a data set made up of 205 contemporary domestic newspaper reports of court and judi     

Efficient,Fair, and Incomprehensible: How the State “Sells” Its Judiciary

Socio‐legal scholars often approach dispute resolution from the perspective of the disputants, emphasizing how the resources on each side shape the course of conflict. We suggest a different, “supply‐side,” perspective. Focusing on the state's efforts to establish centralized courts in place of local justice systems, we consider the strategies that a supplier of dispute resolving services uses to attract disputes for resolution. We argue that state actors often attempt to “sell” centralized courts to potential litigants by insisting that the state's services are more efficient and fair than local courts operating outside direct state control. Moreover, we argue that state actors also invest significant energy in claiming that the local courts are incomprehensible. Thus, in its efforts to introduce and advance centralized courts, the state argues not only that it offers the best version of what the citizenry wants, but also that it is impossible to conceive that people would want something other than what the state offers. We illustrate our argument and explain its significance by examining judicial reform in New York, where there has been a decades‐long effort to displace local justice systems.     

Crossover Cases of High‐Conflict Families Involving Child Protection Services: Ontario Research Findings and Suggestions for Good Practices

Child protection services (CPS) are increasingly becoming involved in high‐conflict separations and the related custody and access proceedings. CPS involvement is often necessary to respond to abuse or neglect allegations or protect children from emotional harm. However, these crossover cases are very challenging for family justice professionals. This article reports on research on crossover cases in Ontario, including an analysis of reported court decisions, a survey of CPS staff, and interviews with family justice professionals. We suggest clearer CPS policies; improved understanding of respective professional roles; CPS summary reports for family courts; increased interagency coordination, communication, and training; and use of judicial case management.     

Equal access to justice

Conclusion My concerns are unlikely to strike a note amongst those senior judges delivering “big justice” who will operate in the multi-track. They seldom encounter disabled people in their courts and when they do access, communication and representation problems are likely to have been sorted out at an earlier stage. But for those of us who have to deal with those earlier stages or are to (and already do) deliver “bulk justice” in the fast track and small claims courts, coping with disabled litigants is already a problem. Hitherto we have responded with insufficient care to their needs, but is it too late to hope that we may be encouraged (or better still constrained) to take into account their disclosed needs when managing cases so that civil proceedings may be conducted in a manner that is fair to all. If we do not face up to this now we could find ourselves and our courts in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 which is intended to impose the new culture on society (including our courts). The message from society is clear: a change in the culture of civil justice is required but we must not overlook the “disability factor”. A District Judge at Preston on the Northern Circuit.     

Models and methods of cost-effective child custody evaluation

Child custody evaluations (CCEs) are often seen as a necessity by the legal system when caregivers cannot find a resolution to their child custody disputes. In many instances, these evaluations are quite costly for the litigants and cost can act as a barrier to equal access to justice. Affluent families are better able to access private evaluators while families with lesser means may encounter delays in receiving services or be unable to afford an evaluation at all. This can, in turn, prolong resolution of league disputes, increasing the emotional toll on families, and hamper courts in making decisions in the best interests of the children involved. This article examines models of providing CCEs outside of an isolated individual provider private practice format. It examines the benefits and considerations for lower-cost evaluations, while discussing how to maintain high quality services that adequately assess family systems. Broader issues that impact the courts and overall access to justice through offering cost effective evaluations are also discussed.     

The “Right Paper”: Developing Legal Literacy in a Legal Self‐Help Clinic

Legal self‐help is the fastest‐growing segment of legal services in the United States, and a significant addition to the repertoire of programs aimed at opening up access to justice in the civil legal system. Few studies, however, have examined how such services work in practice. Through ethnographic research and analysis of meetings between unrepresented litigants and attorneys offering advice in a legal self‐help clinic, this article expands the empirical investigation of access to justice to consider what legal self‐help looks like in actual practice. In this article, I follow the concept of the “right paper” to analyze the process through which legal self‐help litigants develop legal literacy, including the role of lawyers in helping them to do so. The article concludes by discussing what such practices reveal about recent efforts to open up access to justice and also about the dynamics through which people come to think about law and, especially, how to use it.     

The right to counsel in juvenile court

Research Summary The U.S. Supreme Court in In re Gault granted delinquents the right to counsel in juvenile courts. Decades after Gault, efforts to provide adequate defense representation in juvenile courts have failed in most states. Moreover, juvenile justice administration varies with structural context and produces justice-by-geography. In 1995, Minnesota enacted juvenile law reforms, which include mandatory appointment of counsel. This pre- and post-reform legal impact study compares how juvenile courts processed youths before and after the statutory changes. We assess how legal changes affected the delivery of defense services and how implementation varied with urban, suburban, and rural context. Policy Implications We report inconsistent judicial compliance with the mandate to appoint counsel. Despite unambiguous legislative intent, rates of representation improved for only one category of offenders. However, we find a positive reduction in justice by geography, especially in rural courts. Given judicial resistance to procedural reforms, states must find additional strategies to provide counsel in juvenile courts.     

Judges,Litigants, and the Design of Courts

Two important perspectives on courts highlight fundamentally different elements of adjudication and yield distinct predictions about judicial outcomes. The Attitudinal Model of judicial voting posits judge ideology as a strong predictor of court outcomes. Alternatively, the Law and Economics perspective focuses on the settlement behavior of litigants and reasons that while judges may vote ideologically, litigants adapt to these ideological proclivities, nullifying the effect of judge ideology. This analysis focuses on reconciling expectations about the effects of judge ideology and litigant strategies by examining their contingent nature and the conditioning effects of institutional design. The analysis examines state supreme courts from 1995–1998 to identify empirical evidence supporting both perspectives. While some state supreme courts have discretionary dockets allowing judges greater opportunities to exercise their ideology, others lack discretionary docket control, making dockets and outcomes largely litigant driven. Support for each perspective largely hinges on this fundamental feature of institutional design.     

现代社会中司法的力量——兼论转型中国司法的两难困境及应对

在现代社会中,司法成为一种专门且相对独立的活动,这不仅是分权制衡的必要和纠纷解决的产物,也是现代国家统治正当化的策略选择。由此,司法活动既受内在限制,也蕴含了影响国家治理和社会发展的潜在力量。面对人们司法预期增长与法院自身能力不足的矛盾,司法力量的铸成需以克制为基本立场,并依靠相应的制度和司法技艺灵活处理可能危及自身安全和正当性的社会需求。相形之下,转型中国的司法尚未完成现代化就已经无法避免能动的角色担当,其力量的培育不仅需要在审判独立性方面着力,而且还要注重为法院"减压",并理性认识和评估法官实践中的智慧。     

Delivering Justice in Indigenous Sentencing Courts: What This Means for Judicial Officers,Elders, Community Representatives,and Indigenous Court Workers

Indigenous sentencing courts are now an established form of innovative justice practice in most Australian jurisdictions. Whether such processes, which involve the participation of local community elders or representatives in sentencing an offender, provide a “better” form of justice is still up for debate. Recidivism analyses have yet to find that these courts are more likely to reduce reoffending than their mainstream counterparts. Some scholars argue that this is not the sole purpose of the courts and that other measures of “success” should be utilised when evaluating their performance. This article uses interviews with judicial officers, elders, community representatives, and Indigenous and non‐Indigenous court workers to explore what the courts are seeking to achieve and how that translates into a different form of doing justice.     

价值视角的转变与正义模式的演绎——评美国1998年《ADR 法》

经过联邦法院对 ADR 的十几年的探索实验,美国国会最终通过了1998年《ADR 法》,为 ADR 措施的开展发放了“绿卡”。该法要求所有的美国联邦法院实施“当事人服务型”的 ADR 措施,并允许法院强制当事人参加 ADR 程序。联邦法院 ADR 部门要想成功有效的实施该法,对各种 ADR 措施进行选择,以使其与现有的法院体系相兼容,同时为当事人提供便利,首先要协调好 ADR 措施所内涵的正义模式与一直引导着法院的传统的判决型的正义模式的关系。     

Litigant Status and Trial Court Appeal Mobilization

The advantages held by haves over have nots in litigation have long fascinated scholars, with a long line of research revealing that litigant status often affects litigant resources, experience, and chances of overall success from trial courts to appellate courts. What has received considerably less attention, however, is how this status affects the decision to appeal. Bringing a new perspective to this important area holding implications for the shape and content of the judicial hierarchy, this study analyzes the decision of the losing federal district court litigant to appeal to the US courts of appeals. Utilizing an original database containing a sample of federal district court civil cases decided between 2000 and 2004, the results indicate, as predicted, that litigant status differentials affect whether there will be an appeal. This influence is further magnified when conditioned upon the relative costs of the appeal. These findings provide one of the first detailed examinations of litigant status and appeals coming from US trial courts and, simultaneously, offer the first empirical evidence to date that business litigants, like previously known government parties, are advantaged over individuals when deciding whether to appeal.