Authors
Overview
Executive summary
Scope and focus
The review examines three dimensions of public engagement: the transparency or openness of the justice system; the representativeness and diversity of justice system actors; and the public’s direct participation in the delivery of justice as lay adjudicators. The focus is on adjudication and the courts and tribunals system (henceforth ‘the courts’), across the administrative, civil, family and criminal jurisdictions. Research evidence on the experiences of the justice system of court users (e.g. defendants, parties and witnesses) is outside the scope of the present review but is covered by a review separately commissioned by the Foundation (Tsalapatanis et al, 2026).
The starting point of the review was the recognition that all members of the general public have a stake in a courts system to which they can turn for redress if they are facing a legal problem. More broadly, members of the public should perceive the courts as an institution that upholds their rights, constrains state power, resolves disputes and enforces the law so as to help maintain an orderly society. If courts are perceived to fulfil these responsibilities fairly and effectively, and to have rightful authority in doing so, they can be said to be legitimate in the eyes of the public.
A great deal of contemporary debate about justice in England and Wales, however, points to strains in the relationship between the public and the justice system. There are concerns about barriers which impede access to justice, declining levels of public trust or confidence, and associated challenges to the legitimacy of the system.
Review approach
This study took the form of a structured evidence review, designed to identify and synthesise the main bodies of scholarship, legal commentary and policy debate relating to the three core themes of transparency, representativeness/diversity and lay adjudication, paying particular attention to the significance of these themes for the legitimacy of the justice system. It did not aim to provide a comprehensive account of all relevant literature.
A search strategy was devised to identify a broad but manageable body of relevant literature. Searches covered academic and policy-oriented (‘grey’) literature, using bibliographic databases, Google and targeted searches of relevant organisations’ websites. Searches were limited to literature published since 2010 and focused on England and Wales. The identified publications were screened for relevance and categorised by literature type, jurisdiction and thematic focus.
A large language model (LLM) was used to generate summaries of publications to support this process, with quality assurance checks undertaken by the research team on a sample of the summaries. Following further additions and exclusions, a final corpus of 156 publications was selected. The LLM was also used to produce structured syntheses of the publications, working from the original sources rather than the AI-generated summaries. These syntheses informed the researchers’ analysis and reporting of the findings.
Findings and implications
Many commentators writing about the courts – from both academic and policy perspectives – regard the transparency or openness of judicial proceedings, the representativeness and diversity of justice system actors, and lay adjudication as complementary institutional mechanisms that can play a vital part in supporting public trust in, and the perceived legitimacy of, the justice system. A variety of other – usually intersecting – rationales for transparency, representativeness/diversity and lay adjudication are also elaborated in the literature. These centre on concepts and principles such as access to justice; the quality of judicial decision-making; public legal education; and democratic participation, scrutiny and accountability.
Collectively, the literature suggests that the three mechanisms serve to progressively narrow the gap between the general public and the justice system:
- Transparency allows the public to observe, scrutinise and understand the judicial process and its outcomes.
- Representativeness and diversity allow members of the public to see themselves reflected in those who officiate in the courts.
- Lay adjudication directly incorporates members of the public into the courts system and the delivery of justice.
The empirical evidence supporting these claims, in the context of England and Wales, is limited. Much of the academic literature is concerned with constitutional, doctrinal and legal principles and associated normative values, which do not easily lend themselves to empirical testing. Many policy-orientated publications are likewise grounded in legal principles or normative propositions rather than detailed empirical findings.
There are some empirical studies from this jurisdiction (and to a greater extent internationally) which offer qualified support for associations between the three mechanisms and public trust or confidence in justice. There is also some more modest evidence concerning their implications for the quality of judicial decision-making and civic engagement. However, significant gaps in knowledge and understanding remain with regard to how these mechanisms operate in practice. There is also limited evidence on the public’s own expectations of their engagement with the justice system, including what forms of participation they might consider meaningful and important.
The gaps in the existing evidence base do not mean that policy action to promote transparency, representativeness/diversity and lay adjudication should await further research. The case for supporting these mechanisms rests not only on empirical claims about their relationship to public confidence and legitimacy but also on long-established legal principles and democratic values. There are therefore already strong grounds for maintaining and strengthening policy efforts to enhance these mechanisms.
At the same time, there is a need to extend the evidence base. We propose a programme of research to address the overarching question: how, and under what conditions, do contrasting institutional mechanisms shape the relationship between the public and the justice system, particularly the courts? This would entail detailed investigation of the processes by which these mechanisms affect public confidence, engagement and legitimacy. A more robust evidence base would help to inform policy and practice aimed at addressing deficits in public trust and legitimacy and strengthening public engagement with justice.
