Category: court administration

Several East African courts will digitize services, with help from Microsoft

From the story:

Microsoft and Strathmore University School of Law have devised a partnership that will see key strides made in the manner East Africa’s judicial systems operate. Named the ‘Policy Innovation Series’, the program targets to digitize the region’s judicial processes, systems, and their overall functions. The policy and discussion are in line with previously set goals that purpose to digitize local systems – an activity that has been tasked to government agencies, the justice system, and the private sector.

***

The partnership will digitize case management systems, e-filing processes, document management systems and courtroom applications such as audiovisual and transcriptions processes.

The current system involves so much paperwork and manual processing, that merely filing a lawsuit can take three months. Hopefully this program will vastly improve the efficient administration of justice.

Courts are big organizations…

…and they require a lot more manpower than what the public might see at first glance. Courts need judges, clerks, and staff attorneys, to be sure — but they also need custodians, security officers, chefs, IT professionals, accountants, operations administrators, and every other type of job that allows large organizations to operate smoothly.

That point was recently driven home by this quirky job posting on the website for the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Colorado:

Apply for the full-time position of Database Specialist or Programmer for the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Colorado, and join us as a respected and valued cog of the massive federal  bureaucracy.

We work eight-hour days, rarely ever work after hours, and are not on call. Best of all, we have a benefits package that even the largest corporate conglomerate can’t (read won’t) offer, including a healthcare plan shared by members of the Supreme Court, all Federal Holidays off, amazing amounts of paid leave and separate sick leave, inclusion in one of the best rated, lowest cost retirement funds, and wait for it . . . a generous, guaranteed annuity (pension) backed by the Federal Government! You can work and have a life.

This job description is not exactly imbued with the deep solemnity that John Roberts tries to cultivate in all aspects  of the federal courts’ public persona. But perhaps that is the point. It’s a job posting for a database specialist, not a judge, and is (evidently) written to attract the best candidates for that specific position. Some database specialists may dream of working specifically in the court system. But I suspect that most don’t care too much about the organization’s day-to-day work, as long as the job is interesting, pays well, and has good benefits.

Bravo to the supervisors who allowed this posting to go up, and for giving us glimpse into the real people who make the courts run.

Federal judiciary issues $7.22B budget request for FY19

Representatives of the federal judiciary testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government today, issuing a budget request for $7.22 billion for Fiscal Year 2019. The request reflects an overall increase of 3.2 percent to maintain current services and fund priority initiatives — including $95 million for cybersecurity.

Seven billion dollars is nothing to sneeze at, but it represents a tiny fraction of the overall national budget (currently proposed at $4.41 trillion for FY19). The requested judicial budget is one percent of the White House’s 2019 allocation for national defense alone. It is, in the end, a remarkably small amount of money to fund the operations of  an entire branch of government.

N.B. — in the link above, the U.S. Courts helpfully included a video of the entire hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee. Remarkably, this act of transparency did not hopelessly compromise the integrity of the federal judiciary. It’s time to bring similar video technology into the courtroom.

California judiciary readies new sexual harassment guidelines

In the wake of the federal court system’s formation of a working group to address sexual harassment in the judiciary, the California courts have formed their own working group to address the same issue. Among other things, Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye is pushing for a change to the current court rules that would require public disclosure of settlements for sexual harassment claims involving judges. Proposed new rules should be unveiled in the next few weeks.

Public defenders walk out of NYC courts to protest ICE raids, are replaced with private attorneys

The New York Times reports on a walkout by some New York City public defenders, who left their jobs while court was still in session yesterday in order to protest courthouse arrests by federal immigration authorities. It was the second such walkout this week. Having warned the PDs not to leave their posts while court was in session, court administrators quickly reassigned ten cases to private attorneys. From the story:

The public defense organizations saw it as punishment for political advocacy; court administrators saw it as a matter of keeping the courts running.

“We say, ‘By you doing what you did, you are disrupting operations,’” said Lucian Chalfen, the spokesman for the O.C.A. “We won’t have that. It helps no one.”

The Legal Aid society argues that the reassignments were retaliatory, but at first blush it seems that the court administrators were in the right. Their job is to keep the criminal justice system moving, and assure that indigent defendants are adequately represented. Whatever one thinks of the policies motivating the walkout, the primary harm of the walkout is to the clients who need representation right then and there. Nor was the walkout directly tied to the PDs’ ability to represent their clients in New York State court; there was no direct benefit to their clients.* That this was the second walkout this week, and the fifth this year, justifies the court’s firm response.

* I recognize the argument that many of the PDs’ clients are the very people most susceptible to ICE raids. So there is certainly some overlap between the policies motivating the walkout and the needs of defendants who need public defenders. But the relationship is still indirect, and ultimately too tangential to warrant direct and continued disruption of court operations.

A good primer on how drug courts work

Howstuffworks.com has a detailed and very interesting article on the history of drug courts and the work they do today, with a particular focus on the courts in Buffalo, New York. It’s a good read for those interested in how the court system has adapted to contemporary challenges.

Canada’s federal criminal reform bill put on hold

A bill that would introduce a wide range of reforms into Canada’s federal criminal justice system has been tabled. Among other things, Bill C-75 would:

  • Take measures to decrease significant court delays;
  • Eliminate peremptory challenges of jurors;
  • Remove “zombie” parts of the criminal code that have been found unconstitutional; and
  • Increase the maximum sentence for repeat domestic abusers.

We will continue to keep an eye on the bill’s progress, if any, in the coming months.

Federal courts release Annual Report and latest statistics

The Administrative Office of the United States Courts has released its 2017 annual report, which includes a wealth of caseload statistics for the district courts and circuit courts of appeal. It’s a fascinating read for those who like reams of data.

For those who just want the punchline, Law360 gives a good summary:

In the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2017, case filings fell in federal courts of appeal by 16 percent and in district courts by 7 percent, while petitions to U.S. bankruptcy courts fell by 2 percent, bringing the overall number of cases filed in each of those courts to their lowest levels since at least fiscal year 2013, the report shows.

Since 2013, the number of cases filed in federal appellate courts have dropped by 10.5 percent, while the number filed in district courts have fallen 6 percent and federal bankruptcy petitions have declined by 28.5 percent, according to the data, which pointed to a few factors that impacted the year-on-year decline in each of those courts.

In U.S. district courts, the decline from 2016 was driven by a reduction in civil filings. They fell 8 percent from approximately 291,000 to just under 268,000 from one year to the next, while civil filings per authorized judgeship dropped from 431 in 2016 to 396 in 2017, the report said.