Social Cognition and Access to Justice

Abstract

Abstract While the promise of equal justice for all is lauded, the reality of the American civil justice system falls far short of this ideal. For most low-income and many middle-income people, the inability to secure representation renders our civil justice system inaccessible and, at worst, oppressive. This chapter speaks to how research on social cognition can be harnessed to promote access to justice and explores the theory that legal professionals in the American civil justice system unreflectively engage in a social categorization process in which they socially construct unrepresented persons into pro se parties. This chapter discusses how judges and lawyers do unrepresented status by imputing stereotypes, schemas, biases, expectancies, and labels about pro se parties onto unrepresented persons who encounter the civil justice system. The chapter emphasizes understanding this process of social construction taking place in interactions among judges, lawyers, and unrepresented persons within the civil justice system.