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

民事司法问题在美国很普遍。几十年来，学者们一直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，人们不寻求援助的主要原因是他们不认为自己的问题是“合法的”。未能寻求民事司法问题的解决方案会产生长期后果，包括收入损失、压力、关系受损以及精神和身体健康的通行费。虽然我们知道哪些美国人经历了哪些民事司法问题，但我们对为什么会这样知道的较少，也不了解各种群体解决这些问题的社会过程。从亲历者的角度调查民事司法问题，将使我们能够为共同司法问题设计更有效的解决方案--根据不同群体实际如何看待法律而量身定做的解决方案。该项目将把作为社会法律研究核心的理论问题和作为诉诸司法研究核心的应用问题结合起来，从而使人们对美国诉诸司法危机有新的了解。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，以了解种族、阶级和性别等人口统计特征与人们考虑的解决问题的途径之间的联系。第二阶段将采用一系列深入采访的方式，对一座中等规模的美国城市中目前或最近经历过这些关键司法问题之一的广泛人群进行采访。这种多方法的方法将提供对人们如何看待法律、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在日常生活中如何相互关联的社会根源的严格理解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.