Against decorum: Why excessive formality can hurt WA courtrooms | Opinion
The first thing new visitors notice in a courtroom is that everyone seems to know a script except them. When the judicial assistant says, “All rise,” everyone rises. Lawyers wear suits and (usually) stand to speak. The judge enters through a private door and takes a seat on a bench raised above the room.
People address the judge as “Your Honor.” Even the architecture directs attention upward.
We do not wear wigs as our British counterparts do, thanks largely to Thomas Jefferson’s preference for republican simplicity. (Thank God for small blessings.) Even so, much of the old ceremony remains.
This pomp lends a dignity to the court. A person who has just participated in that ritual may be more inclined to obey the court’s commands. The ceremony reminds everyone that the proceeding is larger than the individuals involved.
But it is not without its costs. Many people who come before the court carry a history of trauma. They have spent their lives navigating institutions that were indifferent to them, suspicious of them or openly hostile. To such a person, the elevated bench, formal language and unfamiliar rituals can communicate not dignity but distance. The message they hear is that this is not a place for ordinary people, but a place where power is exercised upon them.
That perception matters. Courts depend not merely on compliance but on legitimacy. A person who believes they have been heard is more likely to accept an unfavorable outcome than one who experiences the court as distant or incomprehensible.
To cut through that — to speak to someone rather than at them — requires something more personal than ceremony. It requires eye contact, plain language, patience and a willingness to acknowledge the humanity of the person standing before the bench. A litigant who feels heard may not always agree with the result, but she is more likely to accept it as legitimate.
Those observations have inspired many therapeutic courts — drug court, mental health court and veterans court, among others — to abandon such traditional trappings as raised benches and black robes. Respect, they have found, is often more powerful than intimidation.
Certainly, there are risks. Every step toward informality risks sacrificing some of the dignity that centuries of tradition have cultivated. But the challenge for modern courts is no longer securing obedience through awe.
While judges may not enjoy perfect compliance, neither do we face a crisis of mass disobedience. Most people comply with court orders. They appear when summonsed, pay what they can and attempt to navigate a system whose concepts — still marked by Latin and medieval French — are difficult to understand.
Our greater challenge then is persuading people that the court belongs to them as much as it belongs to judges and lawyers. To that end, every step toward greater connection may also strengthen public trust.
Perhaps the question for modern courts is not how much decorum we can preserve but how much of it we still need.
André M. Peñalver is a Pierce County Superior Court Judge. The opinions in this piece are his alone.