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In the United States, rural economic marginalization and corresponding gaps in employment, affordable housing, health care, nutrition, and education put individuals at high risk for legal need. Yet many rural regions are "legal deserts" with few, if any, attorneys, and prevailing access justice initiatives tend to neglect the unique challenges posed by rurality.

The efforts of rural, tribal, and state court judges, though often overlooked in scholarship and policy, offer a compelling response to this inequitable access to justice context. Building on emergent work on "active judging," or when judges step away from a traditional passive role to assist unrepresented parties, Professor Statz explores how rural place and place attachments shape diverse judges' interactions with litigants. It draws on mixed-methodological research across seven tribal and state courts in the upper Midwest to shed light on rural judges' efforts, how these efforts are regarded by unrepresented parties, and to what extent a shared experience of rurality provides a meaningful form of "access." In so doing, it offers a novel spatial intervention in scholarship on access to justice and active judging, and contributes to more rurally relevant justice practices.

Professor Michele Statz is an anthropologist of law at the University of Minnesota who specializes in rural access to justice. Her current work examines how socio-spatial dimensions of rurality influence legal advocacy, rights mobilization, and individual and community health in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin.

This event is approved for 1.25 hours of Texas CLE Ethics Credit.

Register here: https://bit.ly/3IlbBqn