Legitimacy and Internet in the Judiciary: A Lesson From the Italian Courts' Websites Experience

TLDR

Judiciaries in democratic societies face legitimacy challenges from judicial activism, and conventional accountability mechanisms are insufficient. The study investigates whether providing easy online access to court information can enhance judicial legitimacy, hypothesizing that specific combinations of web service organization, information access, content, and user engagement are required. The authors analyze the websites of three judicial systems to assess how the four core elements—service organization, information access, content, and user engagement—interact to support legitimacy. Although websites can enhance accountability, transparency, legality, and representativeness, the study finds that this is not always the case.

Abstract

Judiciaries in democratic countries have been facing problems of low legitimacy due to increasing judicial activism. Traditional forms of accountability have shown to be inadequate to the present situation. The purpose of this article is to examine whether easy access to information on judicial systems, courts’ activities and cases available through the Internet can increase legitimacy. Although websites can be a tool to enhance accountability, transparency, legality and representativeness of the judiciary, the results of this article show that this is not always the case. The authors hypothesize that enhancements occur when certain combinations of four core elements (organization of the web service provision, access to information, content, and users) take place. Based on an examination of all websites of three judicial systems, we seek to provide an initial outlook on the use of websites in facilitating legitimacy, and a contribution to knowledge in the field of courts and ICT.