Alienation of people from the formal judicial process is one of the major reasons behind a high percentage of frivolous litigation in rural courts. In a comparative context, Cohn has done seminal work on the community’s interaction with the formal justice system in a village in Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh, Northern India, in 1952-53. He thought that Indian culture was starkly different in its interaction with the formal justice system, in that it was not “decision” oriented. People mostly talk and give vent to their feelings. He observed that in a village panchayat (informal dispute resolution body), people talked at great length about issues that were not directly related to the current dispute. While, the formal system is geared at arriving at a “decision”, the informal dispute resolution system goes for compromise because it helps both parties keep their face. Cohn illustrates that litigants use the formal system to adapt it to their perceptions.

Nelson, in his recent unpublished PhD dissertation, points out that the root cause of delay in courts is the litigants’ interest in delaying rather than expediting things. The litigants want to delay cases to adjust to this historical institutional shift from the informal justice system to the formal one. Alienation from the formal judicial culture is also found to be one of the main reasons behind frivolous litigation in Pakistan. As an institution, the formal judicial system is so removed from the rural litigants’ daily life, their language and their ethos, that even if they master it fully – quite a few people become “court birds” – they approach it as something “outside”, something “other”. Hence, they feel no ethical qualms in manipulating the courts to suit their interests. At times, litigants also get trapped and misinformed by those vested in the system – court officials, court litigants, etc