“It is here we are loved”: Place Attachment in Active Judging and Rural Access to Justice

Keywords: access to justice, rurality, place attachment, judging
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 29

Abstract

In the U.S., rural economic marginalization and corresponding gaps in employment, health
care, and education put individuals at high risk for legal need. Yet many rural regions are “legal
deserts” with few if any attorneys (Pruitt et al. 2018), and prevailing access to justice (A2J) initiatives tend to neglect the unique challenges posed by rurality. The efforts of rural tribal and state court judges, though often overlooked in scholarship and policy, offer a compelling response to this inequitable A2J context. This paper builds on emergent scholarship on “active judging,” or when judges step away from a traditional passive role to assist those without counsel (Carpenter 2017), by focusing on the complex relevance of rural place to judges’ interactions with pro se parties. Drawing on mixed-methodological research (courtroom observation, litigant surveys, in-depth qualitative interviews with judges) across seven tribal and state courts in the upper Midwest, this work sheds light on rural judges’ efforts, how these efforts are regarded by unrepresented parties, and to what extent a shared experience of rurality provides a meaningful form of “access.” In so doing, it offers a novel spatial intervention in scholarship on access to justice and contributes to more rurally relevant justice practices.