WORKSHOP: Access to Civil Justice: Re-envisioning and Reinvigorating Research, Chicago, IL, Fall 2012.

在当代美国，民事司法问题普遍存在。究竟有多普遍还不得而知，因为最近一次关于民事司法问题和机构公众经验的全面全国调查已经有35年的历史了。在美国，这些常见问题每年影响多达1.5亿人，并可能对生活的核心领域产生广泛而强大的影响，如生计、住房、未成年儿童和受扶养的成年人的照顾和监护权、邻里安全和环境条件。尽管这些问题中的大多数从未到达正式的司法系统，但法院往往被民事诉讼当事人的数量所淹没。地方、州和联邦政府、慷慨的个人和私人基金会每年捐赠超过10亿美元，为中低收入者提供民事法律援助，但由于我们缺乏对这一主题的研究，我们对这项活动是如何组织的，这笔资金支持哪些服务，现有计划如何开展工作，以及外联工作是否充分了解和解决获得这些服务的最常见障碍，我们知之甚少。几乎没有高质量的、公开可用的数据来刺激理论，从事学术研究，并在诉诸司法的问题上指导政策。该项目是一个讲习班，召集学者和从业人员制定并开始关于诉诸民事司法的新研究议程的工作。受邀者包括来自民事司法机构的工作人员，如法官、有组织的律师协会的领导人、法律服务从业人员以及来自法律、统计学以及社会和行为科学的学者。召开会议旨在综合和协调现有的研究活动，并产生新的研究活动，包括能够为政策提供信息的研究。

In the contemporary United States, civil justice problems are widespread. Just how widespread cannot be known, as the most recent comprehensive national survey of public experience with civil justice problems and institutions is thirty-five years old. In the U.S., these common problems affect as many as 150 million people each year, and have potentially wide-ranging and powerful impacts on core areas of life such as livelihood, shelter, the care and custody of minor children and dependent adults, neighborhood safety, and environmental conditions. Despite the fact that most of these problems never reach the formal justice system, courts are often overwhelmed by the numbers of civil litigants. Local, state, and federal governments, generous individuals, and private foundations contribute more than 1 billion dollars each year to fund civil legal assistance for low- and moderate-income people, but because we lack research on this topic, we know little about how this activity is organized, what services this funding supports, how existing programs do their work, and whether outreach efforts adequately understand and address the most common barriers to access to these services. Little high quality, publicly available data exist to stimulate theory, engage scholarship, and guide policy on issues of access to justice. This project is a workshop convening scholars and practitioners to develop and begin work on a new research agenda for access to civil justice. Invitees include staff from institutions of civil justice, such as judges, leaders from the organized bar, and legal services practitioners as well as scholars from law, statistics and the social and behavioral sciences. The convening seeks to synthesize and coordinate existing research activity and to generate new research activity, including research that can inform policy.