The Michigan courts recently announced two initiatives designed to improve the experience of being in court for their users. The Third Circuit Court in Detroit opened new lactation rooms in four different buildings to improve access for nursing mothers. And in Dearborn, a local judge has opened a veterans court to provide help to veterans with mental health or substance abuse problems who would otherwise face jail time.
Category: state courts
Georgia judge faces contested election after prominent local attorney promises “blood sport”
Georgia Superior Court Judge Ralph Van Pelt, Jr., a twenty-year veteran of the bench, will be opposed for reelection for the first time after a local attorney threatened “blood sport” against him.
In late 2016, prominent local attorney Bobby Lee Cook wrote to Judge Van Pelt: “I want you to finish your two years remaining on your term and to qualify for re-election — if you have the stamina and resolve! There is nothing so interesting as a Northwest Georgia election where politics for generations has been a ‘blood sport.'” Cook was apparently infuriated by Judge Van Pelt’s position that Cook’s daughter–herself a local judge–was not qualified to serve as the circuit’s chief judge.
Cook, a lawyer since 1949, considers himself to be a local power broker. He has represented many prominent Georgia families and was portrayed in the film “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” Cook credits himself with placing Van Pelt on the bench in 1996.
Last week, attorney Melissa Hise announced that she would challenge Judge Van Pelt in May’s election. Cook says he supports Hise’s candidacy but has nothing to do with it.
Van Pelt is more suspicious. “As a general rule,” he said, “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Minnesota seeks public comment on broadcasting of criminal proceedings
In 2015, the Minnesota Supreme Court authorized a pilot program to allow limited audio and video coverage of criminal proceedings in the state trial courts. The pilot ended in December, and the state’s advisory committee on criminal rules has recommended that the pilot procedures be adopted permanently. The Supreme Court is now seeking public comment on this proposal.
Comments are due by March 25, and a hearing will be held in April.
Missouri’s Chief Justice seeks more treatment courts
It’s State of the Judiciary season all across the United States, with chief justices traveling to state legislatures to lay out the success and challenges of their respective judicial branches. In Missouri, Chief Justice Zel Fischer used this year’s address to seek support for additional treatment courts — state courts specially designed to work with offenders who have drug addictions. Fifteen Missouri counties currently lack a treatment court.
The growth of specialized courts like treatment courts across the country reflect growing sense that the court system can better address criminal and other socially undesirable activity by becoming more involved in preventing its root causes. This is a divergence from the traditional role of the courts, designed only to neutrally determine guilt or liability in an individual case. Courts are increasingly seen as a component of a larger network of public and private organizations that can, collectively, address such issues with more depth. Hopefully the impact of specialized courts will be the subject of further study — and if a positive impact is shown, court systems and legislatures will be willing to further experiment with the systemic structure of state judicial systems.
Florida Supreme Court will broadcast all oral arguments on Facebook Live
The Florida Supreme Court, a longtime leader in televised access to court hearings, has announced that it will broadcast all of its oral arguments on Facebook Live starting in February. The court has broadcast arguments through other providers since the late 1990s. Broadcasts will continue to be archived.
More information from the court is available at its Facebook page.
Another ill-advised effort to “fire” judges, this time in New Mexico
In the fall of 2006, a partisan group in Colorado tried to convince that state’s voters to adopt a ballot initiative that would retroactively remove five of the state’s seven supreme court justices. The justices’ offense? They were all appointed by the same Democratic Governor over a span of a decade. Proponents of the measure argued that the targeted justices had decided cases in a blindly partisan manner, notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary. An exhaustive and concerted effort by the state bar and other groups eventually stopped the initiative from passing, but the bad taste of populist politics remained. In 2010, a group calling itself “Clear the Bench Colorado” again tried to remove four state supreme court justices by voting for non-retention. Again, the effort was unsuccessful.
Instrumental to countering these “clear the bench” messages has been the presence of a longstanding and well-respected judicial performance evaluation (JPE) program in the state. For nearly twenty years leading up the 2006 ballot initiative, state judges had been periodically evaluated by local commissions, and the evaluation results shared with the public leading up to each judge’s retention election. As I have documented in this article, the Colorado JPE process should be credited not only with convincing voters that their judges were highly competent and professional, but also that occasional controversial decisions needed to be placed in broader context in determining whether a judge should remain on the bench.
Unfortunately, the same trend is now infecting Colorado’s southern neighbor. A group calling itself “Clear the Bench New Mexico” is calling on voters to “fire” judges who have issued sporadic controversial decisions by voting to not retain them in office.
But maybe New Mexico’s JPE well-established can serve a similar heroic role. As set out here, the process takes a comprehensive look at the judge’s work twice during his or her term in office, focusing (as with other JPE programs) not on case outcomes, but on each judge’s capacity and commitment to providing a fair process. Individual evaluations are posted for each judge facing retention, and voters can read these evaluations and make up their own minds.
A common complaint about JPE is that retention voters rarely read the full evaluations. Many choose not to vote at all with respect to judges, and others vote haphazardly — focusing, for example, on the judge’s last name or perceived gender, or whether the judge is recommended by a lawyer friend. So there is much work to be done for the JPE process to meet its full potential. But surely it is a better way to inform the public than the half-baked wranglings of political partisans.
Iowa Chief Justice sounds warning on budget cuts
Iowa Chief Justice Mark Cady, in his annual state of the judiciary speech, recently warned that years of stagnant funding for the courts are “beginning to tear at the very fabric and operation of our mission.” State funding to the court system for Fiscal Year 2018 remains the same as FY 2017 and lower than in FY2016. From the Des Moines Register:
Today, 182 fewer people are employed by the court system than one year ago, Cady said — a 10 percent reduction in workforce. That includes 115 essential positions that have gone unfilled, he said. Judicial branch employees include judges and magistrates, clerks of court, court reporters, IT staff, juvenile court officers and other administrative staff.
The reduced staffing has caused delays, Cady said, forcing the judicial branch to back off from a promise made two years ago to try all cases on the date scheduled without delays.
“We have been forced to walk back from this pledge because we do not have enough people to do the work to keep it,” Cady said.
Nash on judicial laterals
Jonathan Remy Nash (Emory) has posted his new article, Judicial Laterals, on SSRN. It is a short and interesting empirical study of “lateral” moves by sitting judges, either from a state court to the federal bench, or vice versa.
Nash’s data set confirms many intuitions about such lateral moves. Unsurprisingly, a move from state court to federal court is overwhelmingly more common than a move from federal to state. Judges do occasionally leave the federal bench to join a state court, but almost always to “step up” within the court hierarchy (by moving, for example, from a federal district court to a state supreme court). Nash also examined connections between lateral decisions and factors such as the professionalism of the state court, the length of the judicial term on a state court, and the expected judicial salary.
The study was understandably limited to moves from one judicial position to another. But at some point it would also be very interesting to explore judges who leave the bench entirely for other legal (or law-related) jobs. We are accustomed to thinking about a judgeship as a capstone of a legal career, but there is no shortage of judges who leave before their terms are up to seek a different opportunity outside the courts. In recent years, for example, both state and federal judges have resigned their seats to take appointed political positions, run for elected office, enter academia, create think tanks, or even join the private sector.
The systemic explanations for these moves might well be complex and varied. State judges might be motivated in part by mandatory retirement ages, looming reelection or retention campaigns, higher salaries, better quality of life, or restlessness to try something new. Federal judges, with lifetime job security, are giving up something more. What motivates the change for them?
Perhaps some day we will be able to dive more deeply into that question. In the meantime, I commend Professor Nash’s piece to the reader.
Cook County courts ordered to make e-filings immediately available to public
In November, the Courthouse News Service filed a federal lawsuit against the Cook County (Illinois) courts, alleging that the county was posting electronically filed complaints days after receiving them, even though the complaints should have been immediately available to the press as public records.
On Monday, the federal court agreed, issuing a preliminary injunction which gives Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown thirty days to develop a system under which the press can gain immediate access to newly filed cases.
I do not envy Dorothy Brown. Late last month, the Illinois Supreme Court rejected her request for a one-year extension of the deadline to align Cook County’s e-filing system with that of the rest of the state. This new decision only turns up the heat on Cook County to develop a functional e-filing system in very short order.
Pennsylvania court will have to operate with only two full-time judges
Effective Monday, the Court of Common Pleas of Mercer County, Pennsylvania will be down to two full-time judges. One of those judges, Robert G. Yeatts, recently assured the public that courts will stay open for business, using retired judges to “run the courts as much as possible.”
Fortunately, the state politicians responsible for filling the seats seem aware of the problem and plan to add new judges as soon as possible. But this story beings into sharp relief the courts’ dependence on others for their most basic resources.
The Interdependent Third Branch 