When Place Matters: A Comparative Study of Access and Justice across Tribal and State Courts

该项目将推进“基于地方的司法亲密”理论，为获得司法奖学金和政策提供及时干预。认识到律师短缺、经济边缘化和获得司法支持的机会不足使农村个人面临法律需求的不成比例的高风险，本研究将评估农村部落和州法院法官的积极审判工作，作为对这种不平等的司法机会的有意义的回应。本研究的预期智力价值包括：在审判与司法共情、主动审判与诉诸司法、地方依恋等不同文献中，及时对农村进行干预。本研究将进一步增加对司法压力与福利、程序公平和对法院信心的研究。该项目预计将产生的更广泛影响包括：1)为州和联邦司法救助举措提供经验数据，这些举措往往忽视了农村个人，因为他们是法律需求最多、同时也最有可能被“数字排斥”的群体；2)通过政策简报、研究网站、学术文章和演讲活动，增加对农村地区在司法执行中的作用的认识；3)跨学科合作的可扩展见解，旨在更普遍地解决农村专业人员短缺问题；(4)培训和提高农村和（或）土著法律、部落非专业宣传和医科学生在数据收集和分析方面的能力，这将使学生群体发出声音，尽管在法律和医疗专业中接受培训的“精英”在很大程度上仍被忽视。该项目将涉及部落法院、州法院和并行司法管辖区——每个都是一个相对未被充分研究的主题——通过明确关注农村地区在每种环境中的作用。它将提出一种新的理论，将地点作为农村司法的一个维度，特别是作为法官和诉讼当事人之间亲密关系的一种形式，在其他诉诸司法的举措失败的情况下，这种亲密关系可能促进有意义的“获取”体验。本项目旨在回答四个主要问题：1)基于地点的司法亲密行为的动机是什么？法官的个人身份、背景和职位如何塑造这种亲密行为的实践？2)基于地点的司法亲密在哪些方面反映和满足了“主动审判”的更一般的目标或假设？它是如何使这些期望复杂化或超出这些期望的？3)当事人如何看待基于地的司法亲密关系？何时以及为什么将其解释为“访问”，诉讼当事人自己的身份、背景和立场如何影响这种解释？4)什么时候地方——特别是农村地方——在非农村法庭和更广泛的全州和跨司法管辖区论坛上发挥作用？有什么机会有意义地纳入和解决农村诉讼当事人和法官的独特经验？一种比较混合的方法，包括法庭观察；与农村法官进行深度访谈和每日汇报；文档集合;当事人调查;部落和州法院法官在正式和非正式会议上的意见也将被利用。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。

This project will advance a theory of “place-based judicial intimacy” to offer a timely intervention in access to justice scholarship and policy. Recognizing that attorney shortages, economic marginalization, and insufficient access to justice supports put rural individuals at disproportionately high risk for legal need, this study will evaluate the active judging efforts of rural tribal and state courts judges as a meaningful response to this inequitable access to justice context. The anticipated intellectual merit of this project includes a timely rural intervention in diverse literatures on judging and judicial empathy, active judging and access to justice, and place attachment. This study will further augment scholarship on judicial stress and well-being, procedural fairness, and confidence in the courts. The anticipated broader impacts of this project include: 1) the provision of empirical data to state and federal access to justice initiatives, which tend to overlook rural individuals as among those with the highest number of legal needs while also likeliest to be “digitally excluded”; 2) increased knowledge about the role of rural place in justice delivery via policy briefs, a research website, academic articles, and speaking engagements; 3) scalable insights for cross-disciplinary collaborations aimed at addressing rural professional shortages more generally; and 4) the training and advancement of rural and/or Indigenous law, tribal lay advocacy, and medical students in data collection and analysis, which will give voice to student populations that while “elite” in their training remain largely overlooked in the legal and medical professions.This project will engage tribal courts, state courts, and concurrent jurisdictions—each a relatively understudied topic—by expressly attending to the role of rural place in and across each setting. It will advance a new theory on place as a dimension of rural justice, and specifically as a form of intimacy between judges and litigants that may facilitate a meaningful experience of “access” where other access to justice initiatives fail. This project seeks to answer four primary questions: 1) What motivates place-based judicial intimacy, and how is the practice of it shaped by judges’ individual identities, backgrounds, and positionalities? 2) In what ways does place-based judicial intimacy reflect and satisfy the more general goals or assumptions about “active judging?” How does it complicate or exceed these expectations? 3) How do litigants regard place-based judicial intimacy? When and why is it interpreted as “access,” and how do litigants’ own identities, backgrounds, and positionalities inform this interpretation? 4) When does place—and specifically, rural place—figure in non-rural courtrooms and in broader statewide and cross-jurisdictional forums? What opportunities exist for meaningfully incorporating and addressing the unique experiences of rural litigants and judges? A comparative mixed-methodological approach that includes courtroom observations; in-depth interviews and daily debriefs with rural judges; document collection; litigant surveys; and observations at formal and informal meetings of tribal and state court judges will be utilized.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.