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Abstract

This Article addresses the precipitous decline of small claims courts in the United States and argues that their erosion is more than administrative; it is a democratic and constitutional crisis. Small claims courts were once the laboratories of everyday justice, where ordinary citizens could access law without lawyers, ritual, or mystery. The seemingly minor disputes of the small claims court illuminate the democratic soul of American law. Yet, over recent decades, filings have declined dramatically, and the locus of power has shifted from the poor to repeat-player institutional actors. This is in part due to what I call, “legal superstition,” an over-reliance on procedural complexity. This jurisprudential Article participates in a tradition of metaphor-driven, civic-minded legal writing, grounded in lived judging experience.

The Article explores three interlocking themes. First, drawing on Peter Goodrich’s theory of law and magic, Alexis de Tocqueville’s account of the justice of the peace, and the curious medieval Courts of Love, the Article locates small claims courts within a tradition of legitimacy, participation, and narrative judgment. Second, the reader is invited to reflect upon how modern small claims courts perform democratic functions, including enabling citizens to tell their own stories, reducing procedural inequality, and offering a constitutional experience of due process at a human scale. I illustrate these points with cases from my own bench. Third, the Article addresses the crisis of the decline of the small claims court, and the inversion of its original democratic intent. Finally, the Article proposes a roadmap for restoration. Key reforms include reclaiming small claims courts as constitutional infrastructure and adopting a jurisprudence of narrative and relational justice.

The decline of small claims courts is not inevitable. With intentional reform, these modest courts can be reborn, not as relics, but as central instruments of democratic law.

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