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How Litigants in Dutch Courtrooms Come to Trust Judges: The Role of Perceived Procedural Justice, Outcome Favorability, and Other Sociolegal Moderators
Author(s) -
Grootelaar Hilke A. M.,
van den Bos Kees
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
law and society review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.867
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1540-5893
pISSN - 0023-9216
DOI - 10.1111/lasr.12315
Subject(s) - procedural justice , context (archaeology) , psychology , social psychology , outcome (game theory) , association (psychology) , economic justice , law , political science , perception , economics , paleontology , mathematical economics , neuroscience , psychotherapist , biology
This paper examines the hypothesis that litigants' perceived procedural justice is positively associated with their trust in judges. We argue that although this association might seem quite robust, it can vary across contexts. In particular, we suggest that the nature and magnitude of the association between procedural justice and trust in judges depends on outcome concerns, and other sociolegal moderators such as outcome importance and prior court experience. We tested our predictions in three different types of law cases among 483 litigants at court hearings of the district court of the Mid‐Netherlands. As predicted, our results indicate that perceived procedural justice was positively associated with trust in judges when outcomes were relatively favorable, and that this association was even stronger when outcomes were relatively unfavorable. The courtroom context studied here enabled us to explore how other sociolegal variables moderated these relationships.