When Judges Don't Follow the Law: Research and Recommendations

The sense that our legal system enforces the rule of law and provides litigants with equal justice may be based on perceptions created by its most visible courts. The courts where high-profile, high-stakes litigation and appellate review take place are frequented by attorneys, studied by legal scholars, covered by the media, and no doubt shape our view of the legal system as a whole. But the most visible courts are the tip of the iceberg and may not be representative of what happens in the larger, more obscure part of our system, such as those civil courts that handle “small claims,” debt collection, landlord-tenant disputes, and the like. Litigants are seldom represented by attorneys in such courts, and their cases rarely make the news or are noticed by law professors. Yet whether it is actually true that our legal system enforces the rule of law and provides equal justice would seem to depend on what happens in just such courts, as they are the legal system as most people experience it. If we care about the rule of law, we presumably do not want these so-called “lesser” courts to be places where high-minded