This essay traces the history of problem-solving courts (including drug courts, community courts, domestic violence courts and others), outlines problem-solving principles, and answers a basic set of questions about these new judicial experiments: Why now? What forces have sparked judges and attorneys across the country to innovate? What results have problem-solving courts achieved? And what ± if any ± trade-offs have been made to accomplish these results?
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.