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82 Judicature 59 (1998-1999)
Familiarity Breeds Respect - How Wisconsin Citizens View Their Courts

handle is hein.journals/judica82 and id is 61 raw text is: 5 W P1, a F am iR rw! iti .01, WWO, breoi :r11!..'7 AT How Wisconsin citizens view their courts Those who have been to court recently have more favorable opinions about the courts than those who have not. by Herbert M. Kritzer and John Voelker and may go back throughout the his- tory of courts. It is not surprising that courts generate dissatisfaction: they are associated with unpleasant things such as criminals, injuries, divorces, and the like. Many, perhaps most, people are probably as likely to choose voluntarily to go to court as they are to choose to have their wis- dom teeth extracted. Furthermore, the nature of news reporting serves to feature not the positive and routine but the negative and exceptional. Consequently, it is not surprising that when the public is asked to evaluate the courts, their evaluations are less than whole-heartedly positive. One of the most cited studies of the public's attitudes toward the courts was conducted more than 20 years ago on behalf of the National Center for State Courts by Yankelo- vich, Skelly and White. Respondents were asked about their confidence in The photographs that accompany this article are from Wisconsin's Historic Courthouses by Man, Balousek, photos by L. Roger Turner. Bad- ger Books Inc., P.O. Box 192, Oregon, WI 53575. 1998. 800-928-2372. www.badgerbooks.com. a variety of major American institu- tions. State and local courts did not fair particularly well: only 23 percent of the respondents said that they were extremely or very confident while 37 percent said they were slightly or not at all confident. In con- trast, the U.S. Supreme Court gar- nered 36 percent extremely or very confident versus 28 percent slightly or not at all confident, and the com- parable figures for the local police were 40 percent and 28 percent. While this survey is very dated, more recent figures show at best only rela- tively modest improvements. In response, in recent years, the court systems in a number of states have undertaken research regarding public views toward the courts with an eye toward finding ways to improve the quality of service delivery and public support. Typically these sur- veys have included a combination of general evaluation questions (doing a good job, confidence, trust, etc.) and specific questions about various as- pects of the court and justice system. (For a summary of the evaluations, see Court evaluation surveys, page 60.) There is a striking range in the evaluations produced by these stud- ies. This range is best illustrated by a question asked in a number of studies that had the respondents rate the courts in terms of the level of con- fidence they had in the state courts; while there were some variations in the exact question wording and in the specific response alternatives offered, the differences in the percentages re- porting that they were extremely or very confident in the courts is strik- ing, ranging from 49 percent in Utah (top three categories) to 24 percent in Rhode Island (top two categories) to a low of 13 percent in Florida (top two categories). A second illustration of the wide range in evaluations is apparent in another set of questions, which asked respondents to give an overall evalua- tion of the courts in their states. The responses to these questions can be split into positive, neutral, and nega- tive evaluations. Again, these covered a wide range: Ohio, 72 percent vs. 27 percent (excellent, good, or ad- equate vs. unsatisfactory or poor); Louisiana, 50 percent vs. 36 percent (approve vs. disapprove of the job the state's courts are doing); New Mex- ico, 39 percent vs. 51 percent (very positive or positive vs negative or very negative); and Massachusetts, 21 per- cent vs. 71 percent (excellent or good vs. fair or poor). Whether these differences reflect actual differences in the perfor- mance of the courts, specific recent local events (a well publicized trial or recent media coverage of the courts), differences in the local political cul- ture vis-a-vis political institutions gen- erally, or methodological effects of specific question wording is not clear. The Wisconsin study In 1995, the Wisconsin Supreme Court's Office of Court Operations undertook a consumer-oriented sur- vey to assess the quality of service Wis- consin courts were providing, and to identify areas for improvement. This endeavor, which grew in part out of discussions that took place at the September-October 1998 Volume 82, Number 2 Judicature 59