A Case Study on Access to Justice and How to Improve It

Abstract

Table of Contents I. Introduction II. The Levelness of Playing Field III. The Law Applying to Case IV. The Court-Provided Form for Initiating Action V. The First Hearing in Case VI. The Court's Order VII. The Second and Final Hearing in Case VIII. The Problems Identified IX. Proposed Improvements X. Conclusion I. INTRODUCTION The legal have been advocating for expansion in scope and methods of empirical work in legal scholarship. For example, Howard Erlanger et al. have argued that we ought to be more concerned with the impact of on ordinary people's lives and therefore should include in our toolkit some of social science methods best suited for this task, including the qualitative methods developed by fields like anthropology and history for examining experience. (2) Similarly, Victoria Nourse and Gregory Shaffer have called for empiricism that adopts anthropological and sociological approaches, in which academics leave their universities and investigate world, (3) with goal of studying the in action. (4) Implicit in these descriptions is idea that mostly quantitative approaches that have been employed by empirical researchers in studying are not providing a complete understanding--especially of as ordinary people it--and thus are not contributing enough to legal policy development and reform. This perspective is revealing when applied to situation of mostly low-income tenants who attempt to use court system to get repairs and compensation for substandard housing conditions. Almost all of research that exists on of these tenants is quantitative. It shows, for example, that they a low rate of success in using warranty of habitability as a defense to a landlord's nonpayment actions or in affirmative cases, and that results they obtain usually improve when they have legal representation. (5) While such research is extremely valuable, it does not answer all of important questions. It does not provide direct evidence of why these tenants manage to get so little relief from courts, and it does not suggest specific ways of improving their outcomes, short of a massive and unlikely investment in more attorneys (and judges). To complete our understanding of what problems are, and to provide a wider range of possible solutions, we need more qualitative work, research that better illuminates what happens to unrepresented tenants' legal claims in court. Case study research is a particularly useful method for such a purpose. It allows for sustained close attention to a phenomenon as it unfolds, (6) and thus helps explain how and why certain events occur. (7) Although it is seldom seen in legal scholarship, (8) case study is a well-established method of empirical research and commonly used in many fields, including sociology, political science, anthropology, and business. (9) It admittedly lacks reliability and predictive validity obtainable with quantitative research focused on large statistical archives. Yet properly conducted case studies nonetheless have been recognized as making important contributions to fields similar to law, including political science. (10) As new legal realists call for, it is a method that allows for closer attention to everyday experience and for observing law in action. In addition, where other kinds of research are already well-represented, case studies can be particularly useful in answering questions raised but not answered by that research. (11) As a means of beginning to fill gap in our understanding, this Article presents a case study on of an unrepresented low-income tenant seeking to address her unsafe and unhealthful housing conditions through a rent escrow action in Baltimore City District Court in 2012. The case was not chosen for attention because it is particularly representative, but validity of case studies is not dependent on their representativeness. …