Panel discussion: American Bar Association report.

• Position: Public Understanding and Perceptions of the American Justice System - Panel Discussion

DR. JO-ELLAN DIMITRIUS(**): I'd like to first introduce my esteemed colleagues on the panel today. To my right is Marilyn Goldman, who is the regional manager and vice president of M/A/R/C[R] Research, who conducted the survey that [about which] we are about to hear. She has extensive research experience in both qualitative and quantitative techniques, and she has worked on a wide range of issues. To my left is Michael Asimow, who is Professor of Law at UCLA-Los Angeles. He teaches tax, administrative law, contracts, and law and popular culture. He is the co-author of the book, Reel Justice: The Courtroom Goes to the Movies. He is also the popular culture columnist for the National Law Journal. To his left is Justice Stanley Feldman, who became a justice of the Arizona Supreme Court on January 20, 1982, and was for five years the chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court. He has numerous publications including, Let's Treat Jurors with Civility. He has received a Distinguished Citizen Award and Outstanding Jurist Award. To his left is Peter Hart, who is the founder and CEO of Peter D. Hart Research Associates. He has been the pollster for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal since 1989. He appears frequently on major television programs such as Meet the Press and The Today Show. Lastly, we have Frances Zemans, who is a justice system consultant whose areas of expertise include public understanding of the justice system, the role of the jury, judicial merit selection, judicial conduct and ethics, and research on the justice system. She served as the executive vice president and director of the American Judicature Society, and she currently serves as consultant to the ABA Committee on Judicial Independence. So with that, I think we will have a very lively discussion. But first, I think we need to present the results of the actual research. Marilyn.

MS. MARILYN GOLDMAN: Thank you. First I'd like to thank the American Bar Association for commissioning M/A/R/C[R] Research to conduct this study, Perceptions of the U.S. Justice System. It's been twenty years since the Yankelovich study was conducted, which was a seminal piece of research covering broad perceptual and attitudinal issues. Based on the number of comments about and references to the Yankelovich study, I can only hope this research is used as extensively. My purpose today is to convey some of the information from this research, to stimulate your thinking, and to generate discussion as to how to continue instilling people's confidence in and knowledge of the United States justice system.

While there are many similarities between this research and the Yankelovich study, we tried to go beyond that. Like Yankelovich, we wanted to assess the public's current understanding of the justice system and the key sources of that information. We also intended to identify people's confidence in and current attitudes about the justice system. But we took that knowledge and the attitudes people hold one step further, to identify what drives those attitudes. In other words, what are the ideas around which people form and develop their beliefs?

In order to address these issues, we talked with a large, nationally representative sample of 1000 respondents, eighteen years and older. To minimize bias, respondents were selected on a random basis, according to the adult in the household who was next to celebrate a birthday, an industry-accepted method of selection. For the majority of the respondents, the interviews were conducted in English, but a Spanish translation of the questionnaire and Spanish-speaking interviewers were available if a person wished. What We ended up with was exactly what we set out to do: obtain a sample closely matching the profile of the U.S. adult population eighteen years and older.

The questionnaire was developed based on information from previous research sponsored by the United States government, various corporations, and the ABA, as well as new questions to address current issues. With the initial questionnaire, we conducted two pretests. After the questionnaire was finalized, telephone interviews were conducted between August 6 and August 31, 1998. This is particularly important in that if we were to conduct this research today, given the impeachment proceedings, we might have different results, so please keep this in mind as we go through the data.

Because this was an extensive interview, I'm only going to hit the highlights of the study and address the issues you will be discussing throughout this symposium. The complete report is available to all of you. Also, to keep the charts simple and easy to read, I have not included any of the significant notations that the study warrants. However, for the purists in the audience, everything I am going to talk about that identifies differences between groups is significant at the 95% or 90% confidence levels unless specified.

Another point worth noting is that you will see references to the term, the U.S. justice system. We wanted to come up with a set of words that broadly described the entire system, so we defined it as the U.S. justice system, which includes courts, judges, lawyers, the police, and civil and criminal justice at both the state and federal levels. You will see and hear about this term throughout these discussions.

As such, some of the key findings from this research are that people strongly believe in the U.S. justice system, though there are certainly areas that warrant improvement. We will get into these key areas in more detail. Further, people have confidence in the system, though that confidence varies by the different components of the system. We also learned that various factors can influence confidence. In fact, you will see that confidence increased over time, from 1978 to 1998, with more knowledge, when a person had a positive court experience and if they possessed certain, what we are calling, traditional establishment demographics. Surprisingly, we also learned that people's knowledge of the justice system is erratic. What you will see is that there are some more obscure details about the justice system people are very familiar with, but they are not knowledgeable about some of the basic tenets. I will also talk about people's sources of knowledge, that is, where they get their knowledge and where they feel they should be getting their knowledge. The final point I'll discuss today is that certain attitudes can influence a person's confidence in the justice system. Specifically, we know there are some attitudes that should be maintained. That is, certain attitudes are key drivers in boosting a person's confidence and are already highly regarded. It will be important to keep those attitudes high. On the other hand, there are other attitudes that can boost a person's confidence, but right now are not highly regarded. These are attitudinal issues that need improvement, and we will identify those areas, as well. Now that you have had a preview of what I'll discuss, let's turn to the data that support these findings.

The first [finding] is very encouraging. The idea is that, at least conceptually, there is strong support for the U.S. justice system. The reason I say conceptually is that what you will see is that people's confidence in the justice system and its various components vary considerably. Specifically, what the data indicate is that 80% of all respondents either strongly agree or agree, based on a 5-point scale, that "in spite of its problems, the American justice system is still the best in the world." This is very encouraging. Further, the root of the support seems to lie in the jury system itself, and that three-quarters, or 78%, believe that the jury system is the fairest way to determine guilt or innocence, and more than two-thirds, 69%, believe that juries are the most important part of our system. Our founding fathers truly understood that being judged by our peers was a strong and compelling method of distributing justice.

However, while there is strong support for our justice system, that does not necessarily mean that people totally buy into it. We asked respondents to rate their confidence in seventeen different institutions in American society. These institutions included such things as the overall U.S. justice system and particular aspects of the justice system, other professions and institutions and the media. What we found was that the range of responses from the institution with the highest confidence to the lowest confidence was very broad. It went from a high of 50% of the respondents being extremely, or very confident, to a low of 8%. What you can see is that the institution respondents have the most confidence in is the U.S. Supreme Court, with 50% of all respondents being extremely or very confident in it. Confidence in other federal courts and judges and the U.S. justice system overall is in the middle, with about a third of the people being extremely or very confident in these institutions. Confidence in the U.S. Congress is lower, at 18%, and lawyers are at 14%. In fact, the only institution generating less confidence than the U.S. Congress and lawyers is the media, at 8%. What this suggests, in concert with the data you saw earlier, is that a clear majority of people believes in the U.S. justice system, but there is variation in terms of how much confidence people have in the individual components.

Now, for just a moment, let's look at the converse of this information, the percent of people who have slight or no confidence at all in the institution. Sixty percent of the people are only slightly confident in the media or have no confidence in it. By far, this institution is in the worst position. However, it is also important to point out that almost half the respondents, 42%, lack confidence in lawyers. We will see later what attitudes seem to be contributing to this situation. On the positive side, the U.S. Supreme Court and the...