Courtwatching
In a unique town-gown cooperative effort, a university program and a civic collaborate to provide a coordinated courtwatching effort in Champaign County. With the second annual community report, the League of Women Voters of Champaign County and the Trial Advocacy Program of the College of Law at the University of Illinois collect and analyze data on the functioning of the local courts. Our courtwatching is concentrated in the autumn, when the Fall semester of Trial Advocacy averages more than 100 students each spending at least 12 hours watching courtroom proceedings from September-December. Augmented by the League's courtwatching corps, our extensive courtroom observations are then aggregated and analyzed for statistical significance.
Court watching is an important program with many benefits. For the law students who participate, it provides exposure to the courtroom with real people, real lawyers and real problems (crimes and claims) in real cases, and as such, is an important learning tool. For the court system, it provides citizen observation of the system and its strengths and weaknesses. Unwatched courts are a danger because so many decisions within the system (jury selection being one of them) reflect society's values for the system of justice. For the parties in the cases (including the government), court watching assures that "fairness is on the table" as an issue to be observed and commented upon. These parties can have increased confidence that the cases will be handled and decided properly. For the lawyers participating in trials, court watching keeps them on their toes giving them more incentive to be prepared to do their work within the system.
