July 1999 

Building Public Trust and Confidence in the Justice System

by M. Wayne Blair, WSBA President

The good news, according to a recent national survey funded by the Hearst Corporation, is that 80 percent of Americans believe that "in spite of its problems, the American justice system is the best in the world."

The bad news is that respondents to the survey also rated their confidence in 17 different institutions in American society. They had the most confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court, but with only 50 percent showing strong confidence in this institution. Confidence in other federal courts, in judges, and in the justice system overall was even lower, with only about one-third of the respondents having strong confidence. Only 18 percent of respondents showed strong confidence in the U.S. Congress. Only 14 percent indicated strong confidence in lawyers. The media fared the worst, with strong confidence from only eight percent of the respondents.

To measure knowledge of the justice system, survey participants answered a series of 17 questions identifying the three branches of government, the function of each branch, the U.S. Chief Justice, and the accuracy of 10 statements pertaining to the function of courts. Not surprisingly, people's knowledge of the justice system is uneven. For example, 99 percent knew one of the basic tenets of our system — that anyone accused of a crime has the right to be represented in court by a lawyer. However, only 39 percent could identify all three branches of government, and 25 percent could not identify any branch of government. Overall, only 26 percent of the total sample could be considered highly knowledgeable about the justice system, and most of those were educated white males with higher incomes.

When survey questions addressed "trust in" rather than "knowledge about" the justice system, the results suggested an additional reason for "low confidence." A substantial number of people believe that the justice system treats different groups of people unequally. Only about half of the respondents believe that men and women are treated equally. Even fewer believe that the treatment is equal among racial or ethnic groups, or between wealthy and poor people. Women, non-whites, those with lower incomes, and those with less education are less likely to agree that people are treated equally by the justice system.

An important point reflected in the survey results is that the more a person understands about the justice system the more that person trusts the system.

These survey results were discussed at a national symposium on Building Public Trust and Confidence in the Justice System, held May 13-15 in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the American Bar Association, the Conference of Chief Justices, the Conference of State Court Administrators, and the League of Women Voters, all in cooperation with the National Center for State Courts. Participants at this symposium were provided the survey results, and additional information collected in two other national symposia: the first symposium discussed the history of our system of government with its three independent branches, and the place of an independent judiciary within that system; the second symposium examined public understanding and perceptions of the judicial system. The third symposium used the information from the prior two symposia to discuss issues affecting public trust and confidence in the justice system, and to develop strategies to address the issues. Each symposium brought together scholars, judges, lawyers, court administrators and citizens. Each state sent a delegation.

The Washington state delegation included the Hon. Bobbe J. Bridge, Presiding Judge of the King County Superior Court; Sue Donaldson, President of the Seattle City Council; Mary McQueen, State Court Administrator; Wendy Ferrell, Public Information Officer from the Office of the Administrator for the Courts; and me, as President of the WSBA. Also attending from Washington were Hon. Paul Beighle, President of the American Judges Association and a Judge of the Seattle Municipal Court, and Ragan Powers, a member of the ABA Committee on State Justice Initiatives. Llew Pritchard, who is very involved in ABA activities, also attended the symposium.

Through the use of electronic polling, the approximately 300 participants identified 10 critical issues affecting public trust and confidence in the justice system. The four issues receiving the highest priority ranking were:

1. unequal treatment in the justice system (i.e., gender, race, ethnic bias; political/financial influence; inadequate training for judges and court personnel);
2. the high cost of access to the justice system (i.e., high cost of legal services; high court fees; complex procedures; inaccessibility of court information; lack of affordable alternatives);
3. lack of public understanding in the justice system (i.e., poor flow of information from courts to public; lack of school, media and other programs which promote understanding); and
4. unfair and inconsistent judicial process (i.e., abuses of adversary system; lack of control of lawyer behavior; discovery abuse; frivolous suits).

The participants also voted on the overarching strategies to address the critical issues, and identified the four highest-ranking strategies:

1. to improve education and training (i.e., improve school curricula about courts; improve internal education programs for judges, attorneys and court staff, including bias sensitivity training in ethics);
2. to make the courts more inclusive and outreaching (i.e., court-community collaboration; appoint citizens to court advisory committees; create a user-friendly court environment; more public appearances by judges);
3. to improve external communication (i.e., improve media relations; improve dissemination of court information to the public and to court users); and
4. to provide swift, fair justice (i.e., resolve cases with reasonable promptness and cost).

At the conclusion of the symposium, each individual and each state delegation accepted the responsibility of taking the tools and the information gained from the symposium back to our home states to begin a process to address the issues. The Washington delegation will be meeting over the next few weeks in anticipation of developing an action plan.

Clearly, one of the important components of any action plan is the need to educate the public. Unfortunately, the relatively low level of public understanding revealed in the survey about our overall system of government was not a surprise, given the low priority civics education has received in our public school system over the last 30 years.

The Public Legal Education Workgroup, an initiative of the Access to Justice Board, and its Education Committee, chaired by lawyer (and former teacher) Mary Wechsler, and the education community (in which the WSBA is playing a significant role) is an important educational project in this state. Judge Marlin Applewick and Judith Billings, the immediate past Superintendent of Public Instruction, co-chair the Workgroup. It includes judges, lawyers, educators and citizens, and has as its goal the design and implementation of a plan of public legal education in Washington in order to heighten public civic participation. The plan would include both K-12 education and education for the community at large. The Work- group, composed of nearly 60 individuals, has been meeting intensely over the last six months to design this plan. The plan will be a significant first step in reintroducing legal education into the public schools and the community.

Another step to educate the public about lawyers, judges and their role in the justice system is a potential WSBA program to place a lawyer or a judge in every school on Law Day 2000. Russ Speidel, a lawyer in Wenatchee, developed such a plan for Law Day 1999 for Chelan and Douglas Counties. According to Speidel, "the objective of this project was to educate students about laws, the legal system, and our rights and responsibilities as citizens." On May 7, the Chelan/Douglas County Bar Association placed nearly 30 lawyers and judges, who volunteered their time, in more than 60 classrooms in Chelan and Douglas Counties to teach law-related education to approximately 1,500 elementary, middle- and high-school students.

WSBA Executive Director Jan Michels, working with Speidel, the Board of Governors and a host of others, hopes to conduct a similar program statewide. Although the program has not yet been authorized by the Board of Governors, the plan would be to work with the other 58 local, specialty and minority bar associations in this state in designing and implementing a similar program for Law Day 2000.

There is much to be done in educating the public about laws, the justice system, our rights and responsibilities as citizens, and the role of lawyers and judges in that system. While the programs described above are only small steps in the right direction, they are, nonetheless, significant as beginning points for increasing the public's knowledge of and trust and confidence in our justice system.

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