Lower Courts

Performance of judicial authority is in part determined by the specific court context in which judicial officers work. This context is constituted by the kinds of tasks the judicial officer must undertake, the caseload, the types of cases, time pressures, needs and expectations of court users, and the interaction and interdependence among the courtroom participants. Understanding court context requires detailed elaboration of the features of lower courts in Australia, where the empirical research on which this book is based has been undertaken. It is also important to highlight the similarities and differences across lower courts in other similar English-speaking common law jurisdictions, including England and Wales, Scotland, the United States of America, Canada, and Aotearoa/New Zealand.