Building Trust: Can Courts Learn From Royal Commissions?

Confidence in the administration of justice and in the courts is an essential feature of democracy. This paper examines Australian research on trust in courts and judges, noting that negative experiences in a particular court may be generalised to the whole judicial system. The converse may also hold true, so that measures adopted by particular courts to increase confidence may well heighten confidence in courts generally.

Governments frequently rely on community engagement to promote public confidence in their policy processes and institutions, though sometimes their methods for doing so backfire and actually reduce that confidence. The concept of community engagement has only recently been used to describe activities conducted by courts and quasi-judicial bodies such as Royal Commissions. Drawing on the author’s experience as a judge and Royal Commissioner, the paper describes some techniques used by Royal Commissions —a different type of legal fact-finding and policy recommendation forum— to inform communities and create trust in their processes and findings. It argues that these techniques could be usefully adapted by courts to achieve the same end, and outlines initiatives already being adopted by some Victorian courts to build and maintain public confidence in their operations and integrity. Viewing these activities through the lens of ‘community engagement’ treats these types of activities as part of a continuum that could ultimately improve collaboration between the courts and the public to design more user-focussed court services. The paper concludes by proposing that initiatives to build public trust and confidence in courts should be shared and also systematically evaluated to establish ‘what works’.