Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
- Institution
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
A Tale Of Two Civil Procedures, Pamela K. Bookman, Colleen F. Shanahan
A Tale Of Two Civil Procedures, Pamela K. Bookman, Colleen F. Shanahan
Faculty Scholarship
In the United States, there are two kinds of courts: federal and state. Civil procedure classes and scholarship tend to focus on the federal, but refer to and make certain assumptions about state courts. While this dichotomy makes sense when discussing some issues, like federal subject matter jurisdiction, for many aspects of procedure this breakdown can be misleading. When understanding American civil justice, two different categories of courts are just as salient: those that routinely include lawyers, and those where lawyers are fundamentally absent.
This essay urges civil procedure teachers and scholars to think about our courts as “lawyered” courts—which …
The Institutional Mismatch Of State Civil Courts, Colleen F. Shanahan, Jessica K. Steinberg, Alyx Mark, Anna E. Carpenter
The Institutional Mismatch Of State Civil Courts, Colleen F. Shanahan, Jessica K. Steinberg, Alyx Mark, Anna E. Carpenter
Faculty Scholarship
State civil courts are central institutions in American democracy. Though designed for dispute resolution, these courts function as emergency rooms for social needs in the face of the failure of the legislative and executive branches to disrupt or mitigate inequality. We reconsider national case data to analyze the presence of social needs in state civil cases. We then use original data from courtroom observation and interviews to theorize how state civil courts grapple with the mismatch between the social needs people bring to these courts and their institutional design. This institutional mismatch leads to two roles of state civil courts …