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

该项目将推进“基于地点的司法亲密关系”理论，以便及时干预诉诸司法的机会、奖学金和政策。认识到律师短缺，经济边缘化，并获得司法支持不足，使农村个人在不成比例的高风险的法律的需要，本研究将评估农村部落和国家法院法官的积极判断努力，作为一个有意义的回应，这种不公平的司法环境。该项目的预期智力价值包括及时对关于判断和司法同理心、积极判断和诉诸司法以及地方依恋的各种文献进行农村干预。这项研究将进一步增加对司法压力和福祉，程序公正，并在法院的信心奖学金。这一项目的预期更广泛影响包括：（1）为州和联邦诉诸司法倡议提供经验数据，这些倡议往往忽视农村个人，因为他们是法律的需求最多的人，同时也是最有可能被“数字排斥”的人; 2）通过政策简报、研究网站、学术文章和演讲活动，增加了对农村地区在司法服务中的作用的认识; 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;和4）培训和促进农村和/或土著法律，部落外行宣传，以及医学生在数据收集和分析，这将让学生群体的声音，虽然“精英”在法律的和医疗专业中，他们的培训在很大程度上被忽视。该项目将使部落法院、州法院，和并行管辖权-每一个相对研究不足的主题-通过明确参加农村的地方和跨每一个设置的作用。它将提出一个新的理论，把地方作为农村司法的一个方面，特别是作为法官和诉讼当事人之间的一种亲密关系，在其他诉诸司法的举措失败的情况下，这种亲密关系可能有助于获得有意义的“机会”体验。本研究试图回答四个主要问题：1）是什么促使了基于地点的司法亲密度，以及法官的个人身份、背景和职位如何塑造了这种亲密度的实践？2)基于地点的司法亲密度在哪些方面反映并满足了关于“积极判断”的更普遍的目标或假设？它是如何复杂化或超出这些期望的？3)当事人如何看待基于场所的司法亲密度？何时以及为什么它被解释为“进入”，以及诉讼当事人自己的身份、背景和地位如何影响这种解释？4)什么时候地方，特别是农村地方出现在非农村法庭和更广泛的全州和跨司法管辖区的论坛上？有哪些机会有意义地纳入和处理农村诉讼当事人和法官的独特经验？一个比较混合的方法，包括法庭观察，深入访谈和每日听取汇报与农村法官，文件收集，诉讼调查，并在部落和州法院法官的正式和非正式会议的意见将被利用。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得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的支持。

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.