Coming off the Bench: Self-Represented Litigants, Judges and the Adversarial Process

His overall assessment was very much to the point: “our traditional concept of adjudication and the assumptions on which it is based provide an increasingly unhelpful, indeed misleading framework for assessing either the workability 2 or the legitimacy of the role of the judge and the court within this model.” Chayes’ work has had a massive effect upon the development of civil procedure and the ad. [...] In the context of the adversarial process, methods that enhance the affected parties’ ability to participate in the decision-making strengthen the overall exercise, while efforts to compromise the parties’ 25 participation serve to impair the decision-making endeavour. [...] Self-Represented Litigants’ and the Judiciary In appraising the continued workability and legitimacy of the adversarial process, given the growth of self-representation, it is important to take account of the self- represented litigants’ perspective on their experiences engaging in the civil justice 45 system. [...] Again, the self-represented litigant’s positive experience was based on the fact that the judge legitimized the litigant’s right to be there by treating the individual with respect, while at the same time explaining the steps such that the individual felt part of the process. [...] Moreover, in acknowledging receipt and review of the self-represented litigants’ written materials and/or oral submissions, the adjudicator was perceived to have legitimized the self-represented litigant’s efforts to engage in the process, notwithstanding the legal validity of the claims made.