It is quite paradoxical that such a negative social phenomenon as the ever-present threat of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its mutations has contributed to the exceptional acceleration of the widespread adoption of the institution of remote hearings in the area of civil trials in our country. Traditional hearings are no longer the only possible format of public hearing in the form of a trial. We are now witnessing a new quality in the way in which civil cases are heard. Most importantly, the nature of the court’s communication with the parties and other participants of such proceedings has changed significantly in the broad sense due to the remote nature of the hearings. At present, the venue where a court gets to hear the parties to proceedings is not only the courtroom in a court building, but also cyberspace. Thus, the landscape and the structure of civil trials have changed considerably.

This article considers the meaning of trust for judicial communication. The central tenet of this analysis is that trust is best conceptualized as a judicial virtue and that it can be most fully explained with aretaic language. This claim is elaborated through, first, making distinctions between trust and reliance, as well as between trust and trustworthiness. Second, exploring the determinants of trustworthiness leads the author to argue for a virtue account of judicial trustworthiness. Third, the article discusses whether and how trust as a particular attitude or propensity may be perceived as a judicial virtue. The argument concludes by considering the relation between trust in judges and trust in justice institutions, such as courts of law.

Article aims to invigorate the study of judicial smiles in Polish legal science. Judicial smiles are treated as an element of psycho-social processes in the courtroom, in particular the judge’s non-verbal communication. Such an opening will be made by identifying and discussing a few real cases of judges’ smiles in Poland, and more precisely in the courtrooms of Krakow’s lower courts (civil and criminal divisions). The empirical material was obtained through passive observation of the hearings, supported by a standardized observational questionnaire. According to the results, (i) there are more smiles of judges in courtrooms than one might think, (ii) a judge’s smiles during questioning the witnesses (as a rule) is generally less controversial than that smiles expressed in relation to parties or participants, (iii) five types of judicial smiles were distinguished, (iv) two of them seem to violate important procedural rules, while the role of others is positive, (v) it is possible to reflect on the development of the judges’ ability to use a smile in a situational manner, of course in a narrow scope and under many conditions.

The goal of this article is to discuss the problem of communicativeness of the instructions given by judges to non-professional participants of court trials. The background of the considerations are the results of empirical research on communication in the courtroom, which, among other things, show that judges are significantly active in giving instructions. Drawing on research conducted within the “plain language” movement, the author points out those elements of instructions that increase their communicativeness and those that decrease it. As a result, some hints were formulated as an answer on question – how to increase the communicativeness of instructions given at the court trial?