Parties: Litigants and Claimants

Abstract

Parties are defined as individuals or organizational actors who enter legal proceedings in a non-professional capacity and are subject to the decisions of legal authorities. Studies of appellate court decisions generally find that large government organizations enjoy higher success rates than businesses and individuals, while businesses enjoy a modest advantage over individuals. Organizations also enjoy some structural benefit over individuals in that organizations are rarely subjected to criminal sanctions for illegal behavior, but instead are subject primarily to regulatory law enforcement and civil court proceedings. Studies of individuals in legal settings are primarily concerned with the processes by which external social categories of social stratification and dominance may be reproduced in legal settings. While procedural justice research suggests a shared desire for fair legal procedures, people with disadvantaged social statuses experience greater difficulties getting their cases heard. This is particularly true when low-status people try to use the law to resolve relationship problems and when they articulate their cases using powerless forms of speech. Even though the general tendency is for social structures of social stratification and dominance to reproduce themselves in legal settings, instances where the ‘have nots’ come out ahead reveal that this is not an immutable process.