Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed the implementation of technological innovation within the legal field. Specifically, state courts used technology to adjust their civil procedures while maintaining accurate results, limiting costs, and providing meaningful participation to varying degrees of success. In addition, given the piecemeal nature of these adjustments, there is a lack of knowledge regarding what actions were taken in the early months of the pandemic. Thus, this Comment conducts a survey focusing on how the states adjusted their judicial civil procedures to respond to COVID-19’s impact. This Comment then argues that the most liberal implementation of technological adjustments may not be best for states to fulfill the historical purpose of civil procedure. Rather, states that implemented statewide orders, for a short period of time, allowing their lower courts to implement a full range of technological adjustments, best balanced the need for accuracy with the costs of implementation to maintain the highest degree of meaningful participation.
Repository Citation
Joshua H. Hernandez,
A Survey of Civil Procedure: Technology to COVID-19 Within State Courts,
105 Marq. L. Rev. 963
(2022).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr/vol105/iss4/6