It's Never Just a Legal Problem: Meaningful Access, Responsive Design, and Procedural Justice

Abstract

Forms. In California, the majority of court activities require forms. These forms were designed with lawyers and legal professionals in mind (Hough 2010) and are accordingly understood best by them. As a result of the legal training I have received through JusticeCorps and my resulting experience fielding questions from self-represented litigants, I have learned first-hand the extent to which the paperwork, the terms and conditions of the procedure, the names of judicial categories, even the method of stapling and presenting documents before the court, are all done in very specific ways. In part, this specificity is an outcome of bureaucratic pressures to standardize and to facilitate communication across all levels of judicial functions. However, the question remains: In a system meant to administer and facilitate something as crucial as justice for the people, why is the process so starkly inaccessible? Surely, the aim of a justice system is not comprehensibility solely for an elite, specialized few, even in moments when more comprehensibility is an option.