Perceptions of Access to Justice Among Unrepresented Tenants: An Examination of Procedural Justice and Deservingness in New York City Housing Court

ABSTRACT

In Turner v. Rogers, the U.S. Supreme Court charged judges with ensuring due process for unrepresented litigants in civil proceedings. We argue that engaged judging overlaps with the group value theory (GVT) criterion of trustworthiness, which along with respect and neutrality typically exert a direct effect on perceptions of fairness and satisfaction. However, numerous scholars have claimed that justice judgments stem from deservingness—a theory that poses a considerable contrast to GVT . In a study of New York City Housing Court tenants, most of whom were unrepresented, we examined whether deservingness moderates the impact of perceived treatment on justice judgments such that tenants who do not believe they deserve positive treatment will view such treatment as unfair. Results indicated that, with one exception, perceived treatment exerted a direct effect on various justice judgments as predicted by GVT, but in contrast to deservingness. Tenants were overwhelmingly positive about their housing court experience despite the documented inequalities that exist for most unrepresented litigants in housing court. These findings suggest a discrepancy between tenants’ perceptions and the realities of housing court.

KEYWORDS:

• Group value theory
• deservingness
• procedural justice
• engaged judging
• housing court

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ New York City Mayor de Blasio recently signed legislation that, over the next five years, will provide legal services to all indigent tenants in housing court. See http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/547-17/mayor-de-blasio-signs-legislation-provide-low-income-new-yorkers-access-counsel-for#/0.

² Tenants only see one judge in the Harlem Community Justice Center, while tenants in downtown Manhattan (traditional court) could appear before one of eight different judges (Abuwala & Farole, 2007). Therefore, any observed differences in locations could be specific to the one judge in Harlem. Abuwala and Farole did not explain what, if any, special training the Harlem judge received.

³ The data set for this study is available from the first author’s OSF page.

⁴ As part of a larger project and in line with the admonishment by Fisher (2007), we developed a procedural justice training intervention for judges. Our broader purpose was to test its effects on tenants’ perceptions of fairness. However, results did not vary pre–post intervention and, thus, are not discussed further. All materials and analyses are available from the first author. See also Farley et al. (2014), who observed null findings for a similar intervention.

⁵ Demographics were not included as controls to simplify interpretation of the interaction. However, no significant effects emerged when we conducted separate analyses with demographics as predictors.

⁶ Randomized trial studies have indicated that legal representation reduces the number of final judgments and evictions against a tenant and increases rent abatements and required repairs in stipulations compared to unrepresented tenants (Seron et al., 2001; see also Greiner et al., 2013; and Steinberg, 2011; who analyzed archival records, and found full representation superior to unbundled services).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant #1456772.