Across the country, courthouse cell phone bans pose a significant barrier to entry to the legal system. HLS J.D. candidate Andrew Reed argues that in attempting to maintain a respectful atmosphere and protect privacy with cellphone bans, courthouses have inadvertently made access to justice less attainable for many, including pro se litigants.
When one court system in the U.S. clashed internally over the best medium to hear family law cases, they sought out a randomized control trial for the answer. That A2J Lab study, initiated in 2021, is nearing the end of its evaluation of online versus in-person family law hearings, focusing on self-represented litigants.
The COVID-19 pandemic thrust online court into a mainstream alternative to traditional in-person court hearings. Zoom has shown mixed results, both in its ability to capture the needs of a court hearing (including sticky notes passed between attorneys and clients) and its role in reducing failure to appear rates in court. This makes online court a prime candidate for a randomized control trial to test its impact on court appearances.
Can we do anything about failure to appear in criminal cases? According to Alissa Fishbane, we can, and for once, what we can do is cheap and easy. Her research has shown that low-cost interventions such as redesigning summons and traffic tickets have been highly effective at reducing missed dates, resulting in fewer penalties for defendants, more efficient adjudication, and savings for the justice system as a whole.
