Category: state courts

Update on state legislation affecting the courts

State legislatures continue to propose and advance bills that will impact their respective court systems.  Here are some of the latest developments:

  • Indiana’s proposal to convert Marion County (Indianapolis) to a merit selection system is heading to conference committee.  The latest version of the bill calls for a 14-member nominating committee to choose three final candidates for the governor’s selection; four of the committee members would be chosen from voters.  Previous coverage of the Indiana bill and its history is here.
  • In Arkansas, a new bill would change the way state judges are elected in Cumberland County Superior Court.  The current election system grants seats on the bench to the top two vote-getters among all candidates.  The bill would require candidates to declare which of the two judicial seats they are seeking.
  • The Florida House of Representatives has passed an amendment to the state constitution that would impose term limits on state appellate judges, including supreme court justices.  This is a terrible idea, but happily it is still in its infancy.  The state senate would also have to approve the move, and then voters would have to approve it in 2018.  Similar efforts in others states have been defeated in recent years after they were exposed for the transparent political proposals that they were.
  • Nebraska’s unicameral legislature has advanced a bill to raise judicial pay in the state.

 

A refreshingly honest take on courtroom cameras

Judge Dale Harris has an op-ed discussing his first experience with cameras in his courtroom, stemming from Minnesota’s pilot project to allow recording of certain sentencing proceedings.  It’s a usefully honest take:

There is not much of a question in my mind that the cameras had some effect on the participants. I could tell I was measuring my words more carefully than usual, and I am pretty sure the attorneys were as well. Although most court proceedings are open to the public, human beings just tend to act differently when they know they are on camera. It is also hard to pull out a couple short clips that accurately depict a complex hearing. Those are the primary reasons I was not a fan of the pilot program.

For those of us who work in the courthouse every day, however, it is probably too easy to take familiarity of the judicial process for granted. Many people never see the inside of a courtroom, so having this type of access through the media might provide some insight that those people would not otherwise get. The media is merely responding to that perceived need.

As a government entity, the court system always has to strive for greater transparency. The question in the near future, as the pilot project is evaluated, is whether these benefits amount to a net gain. If the answer is “yes,” then I fully would expect the pilot program to be expanded to more types of court hearings. Stay tuned.

Cameras probably do have some effect on participants, just as a live audience would.  But if the end result is a sentencing characterized by more measured words and a careful tone, the cameras pilot should indeed be considered a success.

Minnesota courts continue innovations regarding self-represented litigants

State courts have increasingly tried to keep up with the growth of self-represented litigants. Concrete numbers are elusive, in part due to varying definitions of “self-represented.”* But studies undertaken by individual states clearly demonstrate the burgeoning self-represented population in probate, domestic violence, family law, and even run-of-the-mill civil cases. Federal courts, too, report that almost 86,000 civil cases were filed by a self-represented plaintiff in Fiscal Year 2016 (most of them prisoner petitions).

This interesting article discusses the efforts of the Minnesota state courts to address the growing numbers of self-represented parties:

It’s not uncommon for pro se litigants to arrive at court with paperwork that’s either the wrong form or filled out incorrectly. These kinds of mistakes can gum up the system, court officials say. Now judges can sometimes send people straight from the courtroom to a self-help center.

“It helps people feel like they’ve been heard,” District Judge Bethany Fountain Lindberg said. “It also eliminates unnecessary hearings.”

While the number of court cases overall in Minnesota has decreased since 2010, the percentage of litigants proceeding without a lawyer remains high. Excluding traffic and parking cases, nearly 80 percent of cases heard in Minnesota district courts last year involved a pro se litigant at some point, state data show.

The reason is often financial, court officials say. The rise of the do-it-yourself web culture may also be behind the trend.

“It used to be that everyone had attorneys,” said Mike Moriarity, 10th Judicial District administrator. “Now there’s a spirit that people want to try doing it themselves.

* The Court Statistics Project, maintained by the National Center for State Courts, tracks self-represented litigation through a common definition, but the numbers are not available for all states.

Stern on Judicial Candidates’ Right to Lie

Nat Stern (Florida State) has posted his new article, Judicial Candidates’ Right to Lie, on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

A large majority of state judges are chosen through some form of popular election. In Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, the Supreme Court struck down a law forbidding certain judicial campaign speech. A decade later, the Court in United States v. Alvarez ruled that factually false statements do not constitute categorically unprotected expression under the First Amendment. Together these two holdings, along with the Court’s wider protection of political expression and disapproval of content-based restrictions, cast serious doubt on states’ ability to ban false and misleading speech by judicial candidates. Commonly known as the misrepresent clause, this prohibition has intuitive appeal in light of judges’ responsibilities and still exists in many states. Given the provision’s vulnerability to challenge, however, states may be able to avert chronic fabrication by judicial candidates only by removing its ultimate source — judicial elections themselves.

Indiana legislature considers expanding merit selection for state judges

Merit selection refers to a method of choosing state judges through a nominating commission, which typically selects three candidates and forwards the names to the governor for final selection.  Judges chosen through merit selection are therefore pre-vetted for qualifications, skill, and judicial temperament.  Most states with merit selection protect accountability to the public by appointing judges to set terms on the bench, after which they must seek reappointment or retention before the voters.

I have long championed merit selection as the best process for balancing quality judges and public accountability.  The process is not perfect, but if done thoughtfully — with a balanced and inclusive nominating commission, sufficiently lengthy terms to allow a judge to grow professionally on the bench, and retention elections coupled with a transparent judicial evaluation process — they have proven to be very effective.

Many states around the country choose some or all of their judges through merit selection.  And Indiana, which uses merit selection for trial judges in three large counties (Allen, Lake, and St. Joseph), is now poised to expand the system to Marion County as well.

Continue reading “Indiana legislature considers expanding merit selection for state judges”

Florida judge admits ethics violations in election campaign

From the Palm Beach Post: Santino says she broke rules in election but still fit to be judge.

The judge, who was elected in November, is facing disciplinary action for four ethics violations, stemming from campaign statements that impugned the integrity of her opponent and the entire judicial process. Of note, Judge Santino sent a campaign email disparaging her opponent’s criminal defense work and is tied to a Facebook page proclaiming that her opponent “has made a lot of money trying to free Palm Beach County’s worst criminals.”

Judge Santino faces a disciplinary hearing before another state judge this week, after which recommendations will be made to the state supreme court. From an organizational perspective, this is another interesting example of the courts policing the actions of their own members even when those actions fall outside the strict definition of judicial activity.

The case, alas, is also another example of how contested judicial elections can compromise both the actual and perceived impartiality of judges. Most judges, of course, never run into ethical issues of this type. But elections vastly increase the risk of such ethical violations, and the misbehavior of a handful of judges or judicial candidates can have damaging ripple effects on the public trust of the entire judiciary.

California courts to pilot video remote interpreting

According to this story, California will pilot the use of the video remote interpreting (VRI) technology in the Superior Courts of Merced, Sacramento, and Ventura.  The pilot, designed to cope with what is described as a “severe shortage” of qualified court interpreters in the state, will begin in July.

Delaware courts embracing private sector management techniques

Buried in this story about the University of Delaware’s partnership with the state court system to create a fellows program for graduate students is a most interesting point:

In 2014, the judicial branch entered a 10-year partnership with the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics to improve court operations using private-sector techniques.

As part of the effort, many in the courts were trained in Lean Six Sigma, a methodology focused on removing waste from the processes. The courts said this helped save the judicial branch and partner agencies more than 4,250 staff hours.

Courts have been looking to private sector organizations for management techniques for  a century, when Chief Justice Taft began infusing the federal courts with “executive principle.” But until this story broke, I was admittedly unaware that Six Sigma techniques were being applied directly in state court systems.

More background on the court-university partnership is here.

Minnesota judge loses constitutional challenge to state’s mandatory retirement age

Last summer, Minnesota District Judge Galen Vaa filed a lawsuit against the state, alleging that its mandatory judicial retirement age of 70 was unconstitutional.  (Vaa is currently 69 and wants to keep working past next year.)  This week, another district judge in the state ruled against his claim, concluding that the state constitution authorized the legislature to set a mandatory retirement age.

Most states impose mandatory retirement ages between 70 and 75.  Judge Vaa plans to appeal the ruling.

UPDATE: Michigan lawmakers are considering eliminating that state’s mandatory retirement age for judges.  We’ll follow this development as well.

North Carolina House overrides veto on partisan judicial elections bill

As I reported previously, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper vetoed a bill that would require state trial court elections to be partisan.  Candidates would have to participate in party primaries and run under a specific party affiliation.  Disappointingly, the state House of Representatives voted to override the veto yesterday.  The issue now moves to the state Senate.

UPDATE: The Senate has completed the veto override.  All North Carolina judicial elections will be partisan going forward.