The Effect of Court Culture on Performance of Subordinate Courts in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand

Abstract

Judiciary is an essential pillar of any civilised society. Courts must perform better to ensure speedy and reliable justice for ordinary people. There is a need to explore how court performance can be improved. The culture and resources of any organisation have an impact on the performance. Hence, understanding the role of court culture and court resources on court performance becomes essential. This study primarily aims to develop scales of court culture, court performance and court resources. It also seeks to identify the role of court culture and court resources on court performance. To achieve these objectives, a mixed-method research design has been used. A qualitative study is conducted by interviewing court clients (n=15) and legal professionals (n=36) from the district courts of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Uttarakhand (UK) states of India. Qualitative study is done to identify the indicators of court culture, court performance and court resources. Scale items are generated using thematic analysis. The factor structure of the scales is analysed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) for the data collected from legal professionals during pilot study (n=105) and main study (n=518). The Cronbach’s alpha values indicate good internal consistency reliability (court culture=.903; court performance=.913; court resources=.899). The court culture consists of two sub-scales: the court characteristics scale and the work practices scale. Both sub-scales of court culture reflect two dimensions: professionalism and Machiavellianism. The court performance scale extracts three factors: access to justice, quality of judicial activity, and public trust. Three dimensions are identified for the court resources scale: physical infrastructure, information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, and human resources. Pearson correlation, linear regression, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) are used for hypotheses testing. Results reflect that court culture has a significant positive relationship with court performance. Professionalism has a significant positive relationship, and Machiavellianism has a significant negative relationship with court performance. Each factor of court performance is being predicted by court culture significantly. The court resources have a significant positive relationship with court performance. Dimensions of court resources have a significant positive relationship with court performance. Court resources also have a moderating effect on the relationship between court culture and court performance. Among socio-demographic variables, respondents’ age and experience have shown a significant negative relationship with the perception of court culture and court performance. Court staff perceive more court performance as compared to lawyers. This study has developed and validated the scales of court culture, court performance and court resources. These scales can be used by the researchers to measure these variables through legal professionals. This study contributes by developing a theory about court culture, court performance and court resources. Findings suggest that increasing professionalism and reducing Machiavellianism will make the court culture stronger and a strong court culture will lead to a better court performance. Presence of better court resources will further improve the relationship of court culture and court performance.