The Florida District Courts of Appeal have undergone many changes over the last three years, including the adoption of video conferencing due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the creation of a brand-new district for the first time since 1979. Included in this series of changes was a new rule that moves most of the circuit court’s appellate jurisdiction into the jurisdiction the District Courts of Appeals (DCAs). This change has added to the systemic pressures of the Florida DCAs. While the creation of a new district is a step in the right direction to protect the effectiveness and perception of the state’s intermediate appellate courts, more needs to be done. Unfortunately getting data from the courts is difficult; thus, there is little way for the public to sense their effectiveness. While the integration of technology has been positive, the current resources available to the courts to dispose of its cases are in need of expansion. Finally, there is a general need for more support for judges and their staff. Overall, the way that Appellate Courts operate has significantly changed, and the stress they are under has in turn increased because of these reasons; the creation of a new district—while expensive— was an important step to preserving the integrity of the courts.

Court use of web-based videoconferencing software like Zoom to host court hearings grew exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shifting hearings online has had some benefits—it has reduced travel time for participants and allowed the courts to conduct hearings during government shutdown, for example. There is hope that these video hearings can help courts rectify longstanding access barriers that have made the courts less accessible than they should be to people with limited economic resources, those socially marginalized due to their racial, language, or other group membership, those without attorney representation, and/or those living with disabilities. Yet, prior court technologies like electronic filing have disproportionately benefited those with resources and legal training instead, and early empirical research on video hearings shows a similar trend. This dual-sided relationship between injustice and court communication technology creates a paradox: How can court communication technology support equal access when it creates its own injustices? Communication scholarship offers a fresh perspective to this intractable problem. Drawing on communication technology affordances, software design justice, and political philosopher Amartya Sen’s ideas on injustice-reduction, this dissertation proposes a normative, analytical framework—the Justice Enhancing Communication Technologies (JECT) Framework. The framework provides philosophical grounding for collaborative efforts aimed at re-imagining court technologies alongside the communities that have been harmed by them. The JECT framework consists of five analytical steps tailored towards discovering the just actions courts can take when using communication technologies:1) listening for the manifest injustice, 2) acknowledging and apologizing for the institution’s role in the injustice, 3) understanding the communicative aspects of the injustice, 4) committing to address the injustice, and 5) cooperatively planning, implementing, and evaluating with members of the public. These steps point those dedicated to enhancing court access towards injustice-reducing action. The framework can be used by communication scholars and others that study the courts, court information technology practitioners, judges and court staff that utilize the technologies, court program evaluators, and court diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants. To illustrate how the framework can be utilized, the dissertation applies it to an illustrative, empirical case study of video hearings. / Media & Communication