Abstract
Recent years have seen the emergence of online courts and tribunals: digital platforms that enable self-represented litigants (SRLs) to complete electronically the entire court (or tribunal) process, from filing through final disposition. This article proposes that the unique nature of online courts as digital interfaces enables them to implement a new strategy—diversity by design—to improve access to justice and procedural justice for a diverse population of SRLs. Reflecting a human-centered legal design approach, and building on research in human-computer interaction and digital choice architecture, this strategy entails embedding diversity accommodating features in the technological design of court platforms. Specifically, building on the empirical relationship between users’ demographic attributes and their digital usability and aesthetics judgments, this article suggests that online courts can dynamically adapt their interfaces according to the attributes of a given user in ways that help diverse SRLs engage with online courts, support their effective participation in proceedings, and improve their procedural experiences. The potential impacts include enhancing SRLs’ confidence and trust in using online courts and ameliorating their ability to process information, deliberate, make informed decisions and communicate them. Finally, the article discusses concerns regarding the desirability and ethicality of dynamically adapting, that is—personalizing, court interfaces.
Acknowledgment
I thank the organizers and participants of the workshop on “Courts and Diversity” at the College of Law and Business in Ramat Gan for the opportunity to think about diversity in courts and for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. I am particularly thankful to Ori Aronson for his insightful feedback and friendly encouragement on this project, and to the LEHR’s editorial board and anonymous reviewer for their useful comments and diligent editorial work. Finally, I thank Hili Eilam, Or Cohen, Amy Wolf, and Eden Leiderman who provided excellent research assistance on this article.
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
