Understanding Access to Justice: Social Sources of Variation in Everyday Relationships to Law

了解诉诸司法的机会：日常法律关系变化的社会根源

• 批准号: 1946520
• 负责人: Kathryne Young
• 金额: $ 24.99万
• 依托单位: University of Massachusetts Amherst
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-04-01 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1946520&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Understanding; Access; Justice; Social; Sources

Civil justice problems are widespread in the United States. For decades, scholars assumed the access to justice crisis was created by a shortage of lawyers or lawyers' unaffordability, but more recent research shows that the main reason people seek no assistance is that they do not think of their problems as “legal.” The failure to seek solutions to civil justice problems has long-term consequences, including income loss, stress, damage to relationships, and tolls on mental and physical well-being. While we know quite a bit about which Americans experience which civil justice problems, we know less about why this is so, and do not yet understand the social processes that underlie various groups’ approaches to these problems. Investigating civil justice problems from the perspective of people who are experiencing them will allow us to design more effective solutions to common justice problems—solutions tailored to how different groups actually think about law. This project will shed new light on the United States access to justice crisis by uniting theoretical questions at the core of socio-legal studies and applied questions at the core of access to justice research. Two data collection components will be used to understand how people approach seven common justice problems. The first phase will use a survey design to understand the connections between demographic characteristics such as race, class, and gender and the problem-solving routes people consider. The second phase will use a series of in-depth interviews with a broad cross-section of people over time in a medium-sized U.S. city who are currently experiencing, or have recently experienced, one of these key justice problems. This multi-method approach will provide a rigorous understanding of the social sources of variation in how people think about law, the ways people approach and experience civil justice problems, and how different justice problems are related to one another in everyday people’s experience.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

民事司法问题在美国很普遍。几十年来，学者们认为诉诸司法的危机是由律师短缺或律师负担不起造成的，但最近的研究表明，人们不寻求帮助的主要原因是他们不认为自己的问题是“合法的”。未能寻求解决民事司法问题的办法会产生长期后果，包括收入损失、压力、关系受损以及对身心健康的损害。虽然我们对哪些美国人经历了哪些民事司法问题知道得相当多，但我们对为什么会这样知之甚少，而且我们还不了解不同群体处理这些问题的方法背后的社会过程。从正在经历民事司法问题的人的角度调查民事司法问题，将使我们能够设计出更有效的解决普通司法问题的方案——根据不同群体对法律的实际看法量身定制的解决方案。该项目将通过统一社会法律研究核心的理论问题和司法研究核心的应用问题，为美国司法危机提供新的视角。将使用两个数据收集组件来了解人们如何处理七个常见的司法问题。第一阶段将使用调查设计来了解人口特征（如种族，阶级和性别）与人们考虑的解决问题的途径之间的联系。第二阶段将使用一系列深入访谈，在美国一个中等城市中，对目前正在经历或最近经历过这些关键司法问题之一的人进行广泛的采访。这种多方法的方法将提供一个严谨的理解，在人们如何思考法律的变化的社会来源，人们处理和经历民事司法问题的方式，以及不同的司法问题是如何在日常生活中相互关联的。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。