{"id":5565,"date":"2022-05-13T12:07:07","date_gmt":"2022-05-13T16:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/?page_id=5565"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:13:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:13:14","slug":"judges-in-lawyerless-courts","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/in-print\/volume-110\/volume-110-issue-3-may-2022\/judges-in-lawyerless-courts\/","title":{"rendered":"Judges in Lawyerless Courts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\"><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><i>The typical American civil trial court is lawyerless. In response, access to justice reformers have embraced a key intervention: changing the judge\u2019s traditional role. The prevailing vision for judicial role reform calls on trial judges to offer accommodation, information, and process simplification to people without legal representation.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><i>Until now, scholars have known little about judicial behavior in lawyerless courts, including whether and how judges are implement-ing role reform recommendations. Our lack of knowledge stands in stark contrast to the responsibility civil trial judges bear<\/i>\u2014<i>and the discretionary power they wield<\/i>\u2014<i>in dispensing justice for millions of unrepresented people each year. While today\u2019s civil procedure scholarship focuses on documenting and analyzing growing judicial discretion in complex litigation, a much larger sphere of unexamined and largely unchecked judicial discretion has been hiding in plain sight in state civil trial courts.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><i>At the intersection of civil procedure, judicial behavior, and access to justice, this Article presents a theoretically driven multijurisdictional study of judges\u2019 interactions with unrepresented people in state civil trial court hearings. It examines courts in three jurisdictions at the top, above the median, and near the median in the Justice Index (a ranking of state- level access to justice efforts). Despite significant jurisdictional differences, judges\u2019 behaviors are surprisingly homogenous in the data. Rather than offering accommodation, information, and simplification as reform models suggest, judges maintained the courts\u2019<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/i><i>legal complexity and exercised strict control over evidence presentation.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Continue reading\u00a0<em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2022\/05\/Carpenter_JudgesInLawyerlessCourts.pdf\">Judges in Lawyerless Courts<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2022\/05\/Carpenter_JudgesInLawyerlessCourts.pdf\" class=\"pdfemb-viewer\" style=\"\" data-width=\"max\" data-height=\"max\" data-toolbar=\"bottom\" data-toolbar-fixed=\"off\">Carpenter_JudgesInLawyerlessCourts<\/a><em>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0The typical American civil trial court is lawyerless. In response, access to justice reformers have embraced a key intervention: changing the judge\u2019s traditional role. The prevailing vision for judicial role [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8284,"featured_media":0,"parent":5558,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-5565","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5565"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6559,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5565\/revisions\/6559"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}