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Lay Expectations of the Civil Justice System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

William M. O'barr  and
John M. Conley
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Abstract

In this paper we present results from a study of small claims litigants' expectations about the civil justice system. Interviews with plaintiffs at the time they file their cases reveal that many people come to court with profound misunderstandings about the authority of civil courts as well as the procedural and evidentiary burdens that the civil justice system imposes. These findings, based on the empirical investigation of litigants' beliefs about and understandings of civil justice, complement experimental studies of procedural justice conducted over the past two decades. We find that litigants are at least as concerned with issues of process as they are with the substantive questions that make up their cases. Yet litigants' preconceptions of procedure are frequently at variance with what the law requires and what will happen in the legal process. Such differences suggest that litigants' expectations and understandings deserve attention in the study of their attitudes toward the legal process.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , 1988 , pp. 137 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by The Law and Society Association

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Footnotes

The research reported here is a joint project. The authors alternate priority of authorship in their publications. The research was supported by Grants SES 85-21528 and SES 85-21574 from the Law and Social Science Program of the National Science Foundation. We acknowledge with appreciation the assistance of the officials of the small claims courts and the clerk's office in Denver, Colorado; the persons (identified in this paper by pseudonyms) whose cases we studied; and our research assistants, Mark Bielawski and Rebecca Schaller. Allan Lind provided much assistance with the literature on procedural justice and offered helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper.

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