Kathy Mack

Magistrates, Magistrates Courts, and Social Change

Relatively little attention has been paid to lower courts’ capacity to bring about social change, despite the fact that most citizens who come into contact with the judicial system will have their case considered (and most likely only considered) by these courts. Often these citizens experience a range of problems that are social in origin, including precarious employment, welfare dependence, financial hardship, and various health problems, including mental health and drug dependency. Magistrates courts must respond to social change and its human fallout and, in so doing, can contribute to progressive social change in a local, personal, and incremental way.

Researching Emotion in Courts and the Judiciary: A Tale of Two Projects

The dominant image of judicial authority is emotional detachment; however, judicial work involves emotion. This presents a challenge for researchers to investigate emotions where they are disavowed. Two projects, one in Australia and another in Sweden, use multiple sociological research methods to study judicial experience, expression, and management of emotion. In both projects, observational research examines judicial officers’ display of emotion in court, while interviews investigate judicial emotional experiences. Surveys in Australia identify emotions judicial officers generally find important in their work; in Sweden, shadowing allows researchers to investigate individual judicial emotion experiences and expression. Evaluating the different methods used demonstrates the limitations and effectiveness of particular research designs, the value of multiple methods and the challenges for researching emotion.

Job satisfaction in the judiciary

This article examines job satisfaction among judicial officers in Australia. Increasing numbers of women have entered the judiciary and their job satisfaction is a key route to understanding their experiences of this elite role. This paper applies concepts of job satisfaction to the judiciary and investigates gender differences. Data from two national surveys demonstrate that women and men across the Australian judiciary express very high levels of overall job satisfaction, though areas of dissatisfaction exist, in particular regarding work–life balance. Gender differences do not appear to be direct, but mediated by other characteristics which are gender-related. Broadly, these findings demonstrate that a full understanding of job satisfaction now requires attention to family/domestic demands and commitments and the workplace context, as well as to the intrinsic nature of the work and the extrinsic characteristics of the job.

Judging in lower courts: Conventional, procedural, therapeutic and feminist approaches

Recent theorising about feminist judging has concentrated on appellate courts and their judgments. This paper develops a conceptualisation of feminist judging in lower, first instance courts, which are dominated by high case volume and limited time for each matter, with decisions given orally and ex tempore rather than in elaborated written judgments. Through careful accounts of the philosophy, goals and practices of conventional as well as newer, more engaged approaches to judging, the paper compares and contrasts feminist judging with other approaches to judging in the lower courts. This entails considering dimensions such as the judicial officers orientation to substantive law and practice in court, concepts of fairness, ethical commitments, the view of the defendant, and judicial qualities and capacities.

Performing Authority: Communicating Judicial Decisions in Lower Criminal Courts:

In the courtroom legal authority must be performed by the presiding judicial officer. It is also a social situation where information and emotions must be managed in face-to-face interactions. This paper investigates how magistrates perform their authority in the delivery of decisions in open court. An observational study of criminal cases in Australian lower courts shows that magistrates communicate sentencing decisions in a distinct manner. Magistrates frequently look and speak directly to the person being sentenced (the defendant), in line with everyday conversational conventions, and preface their decision with explanations, which allow for some engagement with the defendant. When delivering other kinds of decisions (in criminal cases), such as adjournments, magistrates display less engagement with the defendant. These findings underscore the important ways in which the embodied presence of the defendant and the interactional dimensions of the courtroom can impact on the legal process and the legitimacy of judicial authority.

In-court judicial behaviours, gender and legitimacy

Two important recent developments are the increasing gender diversity of the judiciary and a turn towards newer forms of judging that rely on more direct judicial interaction with court users. Empirical research into the views and attitudes of men and women in the Australian judiciary reveals a strong shared commitment to core judicial values such as impartiality as the most essential qualities for judicial work. Slightly larger proportions of women express positive attitudes towards skills and practices such as communication and listening, while also expressing strong commitment to the importance of legal skills. Analysis of in-court behaviours of men and women in Australian courts, including the time taken to hear matters, the demeanours displayed towards those appearing in court and the frequency of judicial officers looking at and speaking directly to defendants, finds strong similarities and some differences between men and women. These findings provide important insights into the meanings of gender diversity in the judiciary, the increasingly contested nature of the judicial role and the legitimacy of different approaches to judging.

Judicial Humour and Inter-Professional Relations in the Courtroom

Conventional understandings of the judicial role emphasise impersonality, leaving little space for humour. However, the courtroom is a workplace where different professions come together, each highly dependent on the other. Solicitors, barristers and police prosecutors (in lower courts) provide information or undertake tasks necessary for judicial decision-making. Although judicial officers in both higher and lower courts have considerable formal legal authority, their direct supervisory power over the out-of-court work of these other professionals is limited. This observational study of Australian lower courts finds that one strategy magistrates adopt to bridge this gap is humour. A magistrate’s practical use of humour can help judicial officers meet organisational challenges such as time management, while the normative use of humour delineates inter-professional roles and obligations.

Judicial engagement and AV links: judicial perceptions from Australian courts

ABSTRACT Use of technology significantly impacts the nature of judicial work. While audio-visual (“AV”) links may generate some efficiencies, the increasing use of this technology conflicts with other important developments, notably procedural justice and therapeutic jurisprudence, which recognise and valorise the interactive nature of judicial work, especially sentencing in criminal cases. Analysing judicial perceptions of AV use in courts creates a clearer picture of its benefits and disadvantages, particularly in light of expectations of direct personal engagement.

Judicial Attitudes toward Everyday Work

This chapter investigates the attitudes judicial officers express about their work, including the skills and qualities necessary for everyday work and their experiences of satisfaction and stress. In doing so, it draws on the considerable literature on professional occupations and knowledge-based work (Gorman and Sandefur 2011), which rarely asks about judging and judicial work.

Demeanor in Court

The demeanors magistrates display must meet the normative demands of the judicial role within the practical constraints of long case lists, considerable time pressure, and unrepresented parties. The research findings confirm the practical and conceptual importance of judicial demeanor and reveal a wide range of judicial demeanors as part of legitimate judicial performance.1 Some demeanors entail detachment as communicating impartiality, which may maximize formal institutional legitimacy, while others appear to value engagement, which supports more relational concepts of legitimacy.