Procedural Fairness For Courts and Judges   resource and discussion on procedural fairness

I am genuinely excited to announce some new resources on procedural fairness in courts and beyond. These resources can be found at a companion web page, ProceduralFairnessGuide.org, and they have been made possible by the National Center for State Courts, the American Judges Association, and the website ProceduralFairness.org. Let me review what’s now available.

Training Materials. The National Center for State Courts has produced four training videos that can be used to teach judges and court staff about procedural-fairness principles. The situations include an employee at the court clerk’s counter dealing with an upset self-represented litigant, a busy criminal first-appearance docket, and judges on the bench distracted either by paperwork or their computers. Discussion guides are available for trainers who would lead the discussion and train participants. Participant guides offer lists of further resources related to each scenario.

AJA Fairness Interviews. The American Judges Association invited nine national leaders to a meeting on how to improve perceptions of fairness in America’s courts, and we recorded interviews we did with them. Those interviews are now on the web, and they provide a rich background of key procedural-fairness concepts and applications:

• Start with the interview with Professor Tom Tyler, the leading scholar in the United States on procedural justice in both the court and law-enforcement contexts. He provides an overview of all of the basic concepts along with practical advice for judges in the courtroom. Every new judge should be given a link to this video.
• Emily Gold LaGratta of the Center for Court Innovation discusses CCI projects to implement procedural-fairness principles in courts around the country as well as specific suggestions individual judges can implement.
• Professor Terry Maroney discusses how judges can get better at dealing with their own emotional reactions in court, as well as those of other court participants. She also talks about what emotions best enhance–or detract from–perceptions of fair treatment.
• Utah State Court Administrator Dan Becker talks about the work the Utah courts do on a regular basis to measure the perceived fairness of trial courts throughout the state, as well as how that data can be used to improve court performance.
• Joanne Slotnik, who headed up Utah’s Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission at the time of the interview, talks about how that commission used procedural-fairness principles as the basis for citizen observers to evaluate the work of Utah’s state trial judges. She also discusses common problems the observers saw and ways judges might improve their on-the-bench performance.
• Consultant Dale Lefever explains that better relationships lead to better outcomes, which in court means better compliance with legal orders. Drawing on training programs he has done for decades with both doctors and judges, he explains how a judge can build better fairness skills, including how to use videotape to evaluate one’s own performance.
• Kent Wagner, who heads the Colorado Office of Judicial Performance Evaluation and previously directed judicial-education programs in Colorado, talks about the significance of procedural-fairness principles to the evaluation of judicial performance, the types of comments commonly made about judges in evaluation surveys, and areas judges might focus on for improvement.
• Bert Brandenburg, the Executive Director of Justice at Stake at the time of the interview, provides background about public opinion of the courts, including what people want from courts and judges. He makes specific suggestions about how judges can respond to the public’s concerns.
• Carl Reynolds, a policy advisor at the Council of State Government’s Justice Center and formerly the Texas State Court Administrator, talks about measurement tools that can be used to assess court performance in fairness as well as how to train judges about procedural-fairness concepts.

There also are two video statements from state supreme court chief justices about the emphasis placed on procedural-fairness principles in the courts of their states. Then-Alaska Chief Justice Dana Fabe (who recently retired) speaks about the decision to place a poster pledging fairness at the entrance to every courthouse in Alaska. Utah Chief Justice Matthew Durrant talks about the emphasis that Utah has placed on procedural fairness–something that he put front and center in a State of the Judiciary message to the Utah Legislature.

Podcasts. Three audio podcasts are now available synthesizing the AJA procedural-fairness interviews. Prepared by Justine Greve (M.A., American Studies), a staff member with the Kansas Court of Appeals, these podcasts (running 8 to 10 minutes each) provide an easy way to hear the themes from all of the interviews, with clips from several of the interviews in each podcast:

• Improving Judicial Behavior. Listen to this podcast for tips about how to improve a judge’s communication from the bench.
• Procedural Fairness in Judicial Training and Evaluation. This podcast focuses on how the principles of procedural fairness can be used to evaluate judges and help them become better at what they do.
• Procedural Fairness as a Model for Modern Authority. In this podcast, we consider changing ideas about what leads the public to accept an authority figure’s legitimacy. The interviewees argue that procedural fairness is the modern model for the proper exercise of authority, leading those involved to view the judge as worthy of their trust.

In addition to these podcasts made from the AJA fairness interviews, Justine Greve has also done several other podcasts for our website, ProceduralFairness.org. They have been published here on this blog as they have been done, but they will soon be reposted on the Podcast page at ProceduralFairnessGuide.org as well.

I’m very pleased that these materials–generated through the collective efforts of the National Center for State Courts, the American Judges Association, and the contributors to ProceduralFairness.org–are now available. We’ll still be doing some spruce-up to the website where they’re located, but we think the resources you’ll find there will be helpful in advancing the cause of procedural fairness in America’s courts.–Steve Leben