Antecedents of trust in the judiciary: between fair process and high satisfaction

This article explains the antecedents of trust in the judiciary. We question both the contention that procedural justice is a main explanation of trust in the judiciary and outcome-based theories that emphasize the role of distributive justice and court decisions in explaining that trust. Using arguments from the public management literature regarding institutional trust, the paper offers a rationale for an output-based theory that adds public perceptions about the judiciary’s effectiveness and performance as explanations of trust in the judiciary. We also include interpersonal trust as an independent variable. We use a sample of Israeli citizens to test our hypotheses. Findings indicate that both output variables and process variables are important in explaining trust in the judiciary. However, the direct impact of the output variables in the form of perceptions about the judiciary’s performance is stronger than the process variables. This result calls for an integrated approach to explaining trust in the judiciary.