Full-time and well educated judges, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, court staff members are relatively new positions in the American justice system. The benefits of this organizational development are closer adherence to proper procedures, stronger advocacy and a more orderly and controlled legal process to the extent that even the critics of the court world never call for a return to part-time and lay practitioners. Yet, the costs associated with the best and the brightest plague the quality of justice as mosquitoes plague campers.

Consider the fact that professionalism leads to two distinct vocabularies governing what is happening in open court, chambers, and hallways. Practitioners have one set of terms, concepts, and methods of expression and the public, including witnesses, jurors, and litigants have another. The former reflects the formal training, experience, and and on the job norms and and the latter reflects the shallow understanding held by everyone else. No wonder criminal defendants are skeptical and even dissatisfied with public defenders because they virtually have no grasp of what their counsel says to them and to others. And no wonder the public sees attorneys in general as scheming and judges relying on technicalities. I seriously doubt if any member of the public knows what has come to be called the court room working group in crimial cases. And many a doctor who has eluded a trial court judgment thinks there is no reason to considering settlement in an appeal by a patient because the possibility of an appellate court reversal is so close to zero, it likely is zero given measurement ertor. Hey, I’ve already won. Why should I bargain my position?

What does the public generally fail to know? Well, for starters, the public sees courts as just another branch of government and hence the policy making process is assumed to operate in the legal arena. The basic differences between the policy making process and the legal process are lost on the public. The public believes popular sentiments have a key role in judicial decision-making.

Another misconception that the public has is that judicial decisions primarily are the product of a judge in a given case. In fact, the public sees courts as simply as loose collection of individual, autonomous lawyers who have been appointed to the bench. There is very limited appreciation for the fact that the decision in an individual case are in a real sense a product of a judiciary. The decisions made by other judges constrain and direct what any individual judge might decide in a given case. Unpopular decisions are thought to be the product of wierd and out of touch judges.

In my opinion, professionalism both enhances the legal process and makes it difficult for the public to comprehend what, why, how, when, and where official participants make decisions. This observation is not novel, but it does imply the gap between the pros and the public will grow if left unintended. The legal process is unlike many sports where many fans have grown in knowledge to the extent they consider themselves as de facto managers and in some instances deserving of de jure status.

If it is the case that public understanding is worthwhile, the contemporarycourt performance movement should incorporate this element in its proclaimed efforts to establish goals and measures of respect, dignity, and accountability to the multifaceted public. Increase understanding will not make public prone to second guess judges; it is likely to have the opposite effect and make room for a more informed acceptanceof desirable judicial independence. The aim is not to make every member of the public an intrepid court watcher. Instead, a viable objective is to offer a comprehensible message of what is the role of courts in a democratic system. Such an effort will not right every misconception, but it will connect the process closer to the public in meangingful ways.