Trial Courts As Organizations

Overview

I think that this is the most innovative study of trial courts in the past ten or fifteen years. Substantively, the authors combine trial court scholarship and in particular the conceptions of court workgroups, culture and context with business research that directs attention to private sector organization and management. This combination is truly path-breaking."
--Susette Talarico, Albert Berry Saye Professor of American Government and Constitutional Law and Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science Emerita, University of Georgia

Court administrators and judges have long acknowledged that culture plays an important role in the function of trial courts. Trial Courts as Organizations provides a comprehensive framework for understanding this organizational culture, along with a set of steps and tools to assess and measure the current and preferred culture.

The authors examine how courts operate, what characteristics they may display, and how they function as a unit to preserve judicial independence, strengthen organizational leadership, and influence court performance. They identify four different types of institutional cultures using a systematic analysis of alternative values on how work is done. Each culture is shown to have its own strengths and weaknesses in achieving values, such as timely case resolution, access to court services, and procedural justice. Accordingly, the authors find judges and administrators prefer a definite pattern of different cultures, called a "mosaic," to guide how their courts operate in the future.

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Author Information

Bio of Brian J. Ostrom

Brian J. Ostrom is Principal Research Consultant at the National Center for State Courts.

Bio of Charles W. Ostrom, Jr.

Charles W. Ostrom, Jr. is Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University.

Bio of Roger A. Hanson

Roger A. Hanson is an Adjunct Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Colorado.

Bio of Matthew Kleiman

Matthew Kleiman is a Senior Court Research Associate at the National Center for State Courts.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Temple Universtiy Press

Filesize

4.13 MB

Number of Pages

204

eBook ISBN

9781592136322