Testing the Model of Judicial Stress using a COVID-era survey of U.S. federal court personnel

Abstract

Non-judicial court personnel, critical to a well-functioning justice system, experience overloaded dockets and the responsibility of making significant decisions, contributing to cognitive stress. Understanding and mitigating their stress is essential for maintaining judicial efficiency. We adapted Miller and Richardson’s Model of Judicial Stress to assess stress in a broad sample of non-judicial court personnel (n = 122), including judges, lawyers, and administrative staff. Participants responded to surveys about their stress levels, job performance, and health; they also completed cognitive performance tasks. The findings indicated that stress negatively affected employee outcomes including cognitive performance, job performance, job satisfaction, and health outcomes. Notably, perceived job performance had declined compared to the previous year, suggesting that the pandemic was an additional significant stressor. Based on the data, the Model of Judicial Stress is also applicable to other types of courtroom personnel, underlining its relevance across various judicial roles.

Keywords:

• cognitive performance
• COVID-19
• health
• job performance
• job satisfaction
• Model of Judicial Stress
• stress

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Anna Fine has declared no conflicts of interest

Katie M. Snider has declared no conflicts of interest

Monica K. Miller has declared no conflicts of interest

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the University of Nevada, Reno Institutional Review Board (IRB) [1755105-1], and ethical standards comparable to the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments, comprising the ethical principles described in the Belmont Report, and federal requirements under the U.S. Revised Common Rule (U.S. 45 CFR part 46).

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Notes

1 Beck (2011) cited Pearlman and Saakvitne’s (1995) definition of vicarious trauma to differentiate the construct from secondary traumatic stress. According to this definition, vicarious trauma involves an internal shift in the sufferer’s inner experience or worldview due to empathic engagement with clients’ traumas. However, Beck also notes that the construct is often used interchangeably with secondary trauma or secondary traumatic stress in the literature. Slack (2020) also points out that VT is often confused in the literature with STS and compassion fatigue (CF). For the purposes of this study, we acknowledge the likelihood that the robust literature on judicial stress has likely erred in this way, but that the overarching findings that judges experience trauma-related stress due to secondhand exposure to trauma is relevant to the model.

2 Working memory is the term used to describe the memory in our brains in which information is temporarily held and manipulated for various cognitive tasks, such as problem-solving, language comprehension and decision-making.

3 Given that most of our sample were administrative or clerical, and not judges, decision quality is not the main focus but still important given the amount of decision-making power, gatekeeping and general interaction that these staff members can bring into a case, which is why their cognitive load matters.

4 Due to privacy agreements, we cannot disclose the specific jurisdiction surveyed for this project.

5 Additional surveys were collected during and after the training, which are reported elsewhere.

6 Administrative staff other than court administrators/managerial staff – for example, administrative assistants.