Interacting with Procedural Justice in Courts

This dissertation studies and challenges the importance of the social psychological concept of perceived procedural justice in legal settings. Contrary to the legal concept of procedural justice, perceived procedural justice concerns the subjective impression people form on the fairness and justice of a procedure, and of how fair and just they are treated during this procedure. This dissertation challenges the importance of perceived procedural justice by studying whether being treated fairly truly matters for litigants who have their day in court. In three empirical studies conducted among litigants in Dutch courtrooms, the question whether perceived procedural justice really mattered for these litigants, has been answered. In each study, the hypothesized relationship between perceived procedural justice and trust in judges was subjected to a detailed inspection by taking into consideration the moderating effects of outcome concerns and socio-legal variables (Study 1), the baseline levels of people’s trust in criminal justice institutions when initial attempts to bring their cases to court have been rejected (Study 2), and the judge’s proactive perspective of procedural justice (Study 3). Taken together, the empirical findings in this dissertation provide insight into how litigants in Dutch courtrooms come to trust judges, and what the importance of perceived procedural justice is when litigants form these trust judgments.