Document Type
Working Paper
Date
2010
Keywords
Courts, Local Justice Systems, State Action, Dispute Resolution
Disciplines
Courts | Dispute Resolution and Arbitration | Law | State and Local Government Law
Description/Abstract
Sociolegal scholars often approach dispute resolution from the perspective of the disputants, emphasizing how the resources on each side shape the course of conflict. We suggest a different, “supply-side” perspective. Focusing on the state’s efforts to establish centralized courts in place of local justice systems, we consider the strategies that a supplier of dispute resolving services uses to attract disputes for resolution. We argue that state actors often attempt to “sell” centralized courts to potential litigants by insisting that the state’s services are more efficient and fair than local courts operating outside direct state control. Moreover, we argue that state actors also invest significant energy in claiming that the local courts are incomprehensible. Thus, in its efforts to introduce and advance centralized courts, the state argues not only that it offers the best version of what the citizenry wants, but also that it is impossible to conceive that people would want something other than what the state offers. We illustrate our argument and explain its significance by examining judicial reform in New York, where there has been a decades-long effort to displace local justice systems.
Recommended Citation
Bybee, Keith J. and Pincock, Heather, "Efficient, Fair, and Incomprehensible: How the State 'Sells' Its Judiciary" (2010). College of Law - Faculty Scholarship. 54.
https://surface.syr.edu/lawpub/54
Source
Metadata from SSRN
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Included in
Courts Commons, Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Commons, State and Local Government Law Commons
