Observed Realities of Participation

This chapter sets out the findings of over 300 hours’ observations in criminal and family courts and employment and immigration and asylum tribunals. It emerged from the observations that while there were marked differences between the judicial settings in terms of how lay court users participated, there were also many commonalities which cross-cut the jurisdictional divides. At the heart of almost every case observed by the researchers was a story of conflict, loss and disadvantage; and each court user’s ‘participation’ in the case was, in effect, a process by which they told, or had told on their behalf, their own version of that story. However, it was also evident that judicial proceedings did not simply entail the telling of the court users’ stories, but also their translation into legal questions and legal answers – a process in which court users were often silenced and marginalised.