Samenvatting

There is a growing interest in judicial communication – i.e. the interaction of judges with parties in court and the communicative quality of (written) judicial decisions. The aim of our research was to find out more about the role of these communicative aspects, specifically of specific text elements in judicial decisions, in outcome justice judgments of – different types of – litigating parties.
Respondents in this research were three types of parties involved in administrative court proceedings: citizens, their lawyers, and the officials that represent the government. When receiving the written judicial decision in their case, they also got our questionnaire.
All types of litigants in our research perceived a higher level of outcome fairness when the decision was favorable for them. Apart from that, the perceived outcome fairness also depended on the respondents’ trust in judges and their judgments about the judicial communication during the court hearing (interpersonal justice) and in the written court decision (informational justice).
For citizens, outcome favorability did not influence the effect of these factors on perceived outcome fairness. In this respect a clear difference between non-professionals and professionals was found. For both types of professionals involved (the lawyers and the government representatives), trust in judges was more important with low outcome favorability. Only for government officials interpersonal justice was more important in perceived outcome fairness if the outcome was unfavorable.
This means that good interaction with the judge during the court hearing and an understandable and convincing court decision always matter for citizens, regardless of the outcome. At the same time, citizens are the least satisfied litigants when it comes to judicial communication. Also their general trust in judges is lower. As legitimacy of the judiciary is an important goal of judicial communication, the Dutch judiciary is rightly investing in better communication with (litigating) citizens.