Category: Uncategorized

In the wake of more than a week of protests, Polish President Andrzej Duda has vetoed legislation that would have given substantial control over the judiciary to the executive branch.  Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party shepherded the bills through both houses of the legislature late last week.  From the CBC:

Duda said that the country’s justice system as it works now is in need of reform, but he said that the changes lawmakers had proposed threaten to create an oppressive system and that the protests of recent days show that the changes would divide society.

He said that there is no tradition in Poland for a prosecutor general to have such large powers and he would not agree to that now.

This is a victory for judicial independence, but it does not end the saga. Poland’s judiciary does need some modernizing, and we should expect some new, less drastic, legislation toward that end in the near future.

Previous coverage here, here, and here.

The month in a nutshell: the governments of Ireland and North Carolina are each rattled by judicial selection controversies, a group of Brooklyn lawyers challenges the city’s de facto judgemakers, and courts around the world make quiet adjustments to better serve their communities and customers.

June 2017 was highlighted by two extensive controversies over judicial selection procedures on each side of the Atlantic.  In Ireland, the outgoing government gave a last-minute judicial appointment to Attorney General Maire Whelan, sparking outrage from minority parties in the government and threatening the viability of the new government.  The story continues to play out, as government officials seek to implement a new judicial screening committee.  In Pennsylvania, after another messy election season in May, a move away from elections and toward merit selection was endorsed by a small cohort of legislators and five former governors.  And in North Carolina, itself no stranger to judicial selection wars this spring, the state chief justice threw his own support to merit selection in an address to the state bar.

Another challenge to established judicial selection procedures was more homegrown.  Brooklyn attorney John O’Hara announced a slate of six “independent” Democrats who will seek judicial seats outside of the Democratic Party machine.  O’Hara and his cohort argue that the party’s “so called independent judicial screening panel is not very independent.”  They may have a point, if this embarrassing meet-and-greet with a local party boss or this scathing editorial are any indication.

The month was also noteworthy for a number of events that made international news.  In Australia, local politicians were haled into court to explain why they should not be held in contempt for criticizing judges and eroding trust in the judicial system. (Check out the interesting discussion I had about this with reader El Roam in the comments.)  The United Kingdom agreed to take on a year-long study of judicial pay and working conditions, amidst furious attacks on the judiciary in the wake of Brexit and a recent poll suggesting lower rates of public confidence in the British judiciary.  In Israel, watchdog groups questioned the court’s official statistics on divorce proceedings, again illustrating the challenges faced (and posed) by specialized religious courts in a pluralistic society.  And in India, a courthouse literally collapsed.

Then the U.S. Supreme Court suspended the wrong lawyer.  Sigh.

Through it all, and much more quietly, there were almost daily examples of courts and legislatures making changes to the way they do business in order to better align with the needs of the communities they serve.  Minnesota added two new judges to help address the growth in criminal and child protection filings.  Eagle, Colorado developed a partnership between a problem-solving court and a local Masonic Lodge to give vocational training to recovering drug and alcohol offenders.  And El Paso County, Texas, converted a civil court into a family court to better reflect the nature of its filings.

Again, a recurring theme in emerging in these monthly roundups: while high-profile issues of judicial selection, judicial ethics, and judicial independence dominate the headlines, the much lower profile work of efficient caseload processing, internal allocation of resources, and working with the community itself proceeds unabated.

 

 

As late as the 1930s, the federal court system was in administrative disarray.  District (trial) judges were geographically dispersed and unaccountable to any centralized body.  There were no meaningful statistics on judicial workload or output.  Even chief judges rarely communicated or shared ideas among each other.  It took two decades of tireless work from Chief Justices William Howard Taft and Charles Evans Hughes to build a centralized bureaucratic system and create a national culture of accountability.

Nearly a century later, some state courts are apparently still facing the same challenges.  A new study of the Louisville, Kentucky courts reveals a “chaotic” system characterized by unequal judicial workloads, pervasive delay, and limited judicial accountability.  In particular, the study noted that “there is a ‘local legal culture’ in Jefferson County where cases are not expected to be resolved quickly.”

Continue reading “Louisville, Kentucky court system comes under fire for delays, lazy judges”

The month in a nutshell: the interdependence between courts and their environment (legislatures, the bar, political parties, and the communities they serve) is on full display.

May 2017 was another busy month for courts and the public they serve.  Throughout the month, we got a taste of the past, present, and future of state judicial elections.  In Illinois, a judge elected last November refused to take his assigned seat on the traffic court bench, an unusual breach of internal norms that eventually led to his resignation.  In Pennsylvania, voters went to the polls to choose their judges, resulting in at least one instance in a non-lawyer ascending to the bench.  And in New York, judicial hopefuls rubbed elbows with the political party bosses who have de facto control over judicial selection at the trial court level.

Efforts to fill vacancies on the federal courts were slow but steady.  President Trump named ten nominees to various federal courts, including three current state judges.  But infighting among Senators raised the specter of revising the traditional “blue-slip” policy that gives home-state Senators effective veto power over nominees.

Internationally, both Israel and Jordan witnessed important reforms to their judiciaries.  Venezuela’s Supreme Court was subjected to U.S. economic sanctions for their role in supporting their country’s corrupt government.  In Ontario, one judge was reprimanded for failing to explain her decisions, while her counterparts pushed back against mandatory sexual assault training.

Courts worldwide made changes that had significant ripple effects on their communities, including courier services, bail bondsmen, and the local bar.

And external forces influenced courts as well.  Judges in Oregon struggled with ways to enforce jury duty obligations, while courts in Kansas discussed whether shield the identity of jurors.  Six state courts signed on to a regional agreement to combat opioid addiction.  Texas judges benefited from two bills, one to increase court security and another making attacks on judges a hate crime.