Law Commons^™

This Article suggests that people tend to undervalue their procedural rights — their proverbial “day in court” — until they are actually involved in a dispute. The Article argues that the inherent, outcome-independent value of participating in a dispute resolution process comes largely from its power to soothe a person’s grievance — their perception of unfairness and accompanying negative emotional reaction — win or lose. But a tendency to assume unchanging emotional states, known in behavioral economics as projection bias, can prevent people from anticipating that they might become aggrieved and from appreciating the grievance-soothing power of process. When this …

Prior scholarship has assumed that the inherent value of a “day in court” is the same for all claimants, so that when procedural resources (like a jury trial or a hearing) are scarce, they should be rationed the same way for all claimants. That is incorrect. This Article shows that the inherent value of a “day in court” can be far greater for some claimants, such as first-time filers, than for others, such as corporate entities and that it can be both desirable and feasible to take this variation into account in doling out scarce procedural protections. In other words, …