The Kentucky Senate has passed a bill that would remove some general trial court judges from existing judicial districts and circuits, and add a roughly equal number of family court judges across the state. The proposed reallocation of judicial resources would be the first in 124 years. If the bill becomes law, it would go into effect in 2020.
The proposed reallocation is based on a weighted caseload study, a tool used by the federal courts (among others) for more than a decade to account for the complexity and expected resource consumption of particular case types. Murder cases and complex commercial disputes tend to consumer more judicial resources than, for example, misdeameanors or garden-variety contract disputes. Weighted caseloads try to account for these differences, and seek to allocate judges in a way that balances out the court system’s overall resources. The National Center for State Courts assisted with the study.
The Interdependent Third Branch 