Making sense of the new PACER bill

There is plenty of room for constructive compromise, but it requires everyone to acknowledge that “free” PACER is not actually free.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed the Open Courts Act of 2020, H.R. 8235, by a voice vote. The bill would radically reform access to federal court records by requiring (among other things) that the courts’ PACER system be modernized and its contents made free to the public. The bill drew praise from open courts advocates, and furious pushback from the Judicial Conference and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO). Indeed, the Judicial Conference’s reaction was probably the most vigorous response I have seen from the courts in many years.

It is a rare piece of legislation these days that can simultaneously garner bipartisan support and solicit institutional panic from the judicial branch. So it’s worth examining closely. What we find is an opportunity for the court system to improve its transparency and its own performance, albeit not on the schedule or in the manner it would prefer. Continue reading “Making sense of the new PACER bill”

Illinois approves notification of court dates by text message

Another misleading headline: Illinois Supreme Court approves new rule allowing for an expansion of text messaging in courts.

No, people are not actually allowed to send text messages while in court. Rather, the new rule permits individual court administrators in Illinois to implement text message notification programs. The primary goal seems to be getting people to show up for their court dates.

Text messaging programs are a supplement and not a substitute for any notification required by Supreme Court Rule and any failure to participate in a text messaging program will not be considered or used as evidence against the person in any court proceeding.

Participants will be afforded the ability to opt out of the program at any time.

The phone information provided and collected for the purpose of inclusion in a text message notification program under the new Rule will not be made part of the official public court record and shall not be utilized for any other purpose.

An eminently sensible change.

Chief Justice of Ireland refuses pay raise

Chief Justice Frank Clarke, Ireland’s seniormost judge, will not be accepting the €5,200 (approximately $6,300) annual pay raise afforded to him by that country’s government. The Irish Independent explains that “The move is understood to have been a personal gesture by Mr Justice Clarke in recognition of the economic hardship caused by the pandemic. However, the disclosure is likely to put pressure on colleagues to signal a willingness to do likewise.”

The Irish government approved pay raises for all the country’s judges, as well as other government officials. The pay raises come wrapped in controversy, as the government has simultaneously refused to pay student nurses on the frontlines of the pandemic. The circumstances certainly create an awkward situation for judges, who presumably would like to take the pay hike but also want to avoid public blowback.

North Carolina Chief Justice election still undecided

More than a month after Election Day, the race to be Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court remains unsettled. Challenger Paul Newby won the original count over current Chief Justice Cheri Beasley by 406 votes. That lead dipped slightly after a machine recount, to 401 votes. Beasley then requested a manual recount in selected precincts, which is ongoing (and scheduled to be completed by December 14).

But the ancillary fights continue. Beasley has filed 87 protests across the state, conending that thousands of ballots were improperly disqualified. Newby has filed 14 protests of his own, arguing that hundreds of late-postmarked or otherwise invalid ballots were improperly counted.

After this episode, whoever wins — and it seems likely to be Newby — public confidence in the North Carolina Supreme Court as a fair and impartial body is almost certain to decline.

Salt Lake City federal courthouse to be named for Orrin Hatch

Congress can still agree on a few things, it seems. A bill to rename the Salt Lake City, Utah federal courthouse after retired Senator Orrin Hatch passed both houses of Congress unanimously this week. The bill has been sent to the President for signature.

Senator Hatch served Utah for 42 years in the Senate, and was a leading voice on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Much of that time overlapped with another old Judicary Committee hand, Joe Biden. It is a fitting tribute to name the Salt Lake City courthouse in his honor.

Durbin to be top Democrat on Senate Judiciary Committee

In a secret ballot vote, Senate Democrats have approved a plan to let Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois lead the party on the Senate Judiciary Committee for the next Congress. The move was made possible after Senator Dianne Feinstein of California chose not to remain in that leadership position.

It’s not clear to me whether Durbin will be much of a change from Feinstein, whose recent tenure was marked both by moments of embarassing partisanship and sensible statesmanship. But Durbin cannot be worse (I hope) than his primary rival for the position, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. A valuable friend to the federal courts not too long ago, Whitehouse approached the lunatic fringe as of late, threatening the Supreme Court directly and ranting about dark money funding of judicial nominees. Let’s hope Durbin (or someone) can exert control and insist that Senators live up the standard of decorum and reasoned debate that the American people rightly expect of them.

Some Georgia courts to broadcast live trials — sort of

I got excited when I saw the headline from a Columbus, Georgia television station: City of Columbus purchasing courtroom cameras to allow public to watch jury trials. After all, one major lesson from the coronavirus pandemic has been that the presence of cameras in the courtroom is far less disruptive than some believe. To be sure, one needs to be cautious about protecting privacy and due process, but those values can coexist comfortably with video technology.

But it turns out that the Georgia court cameras will only broadcast trials into the next room, not out to the public in general. This artificially limits the number of people who can view the trials, learn about the court system, and see it in action.

It’s good, of course, that the courts are at least opening trials again for public view — and cameras are the only safe way to open courtrooms to the general public for as long as the pandemic lasts. But this strikes me as a missed opportunity to bootstrap a transparency measure and turn it into a much larger positive for the courts and the public.

Posturing and gamesmanship in Israeli judicial appointments

In October, I pointed out the childish posturing of Senate Democrats, who boycotted the Judiciary Committee’s confirmation vote for Justice Amy Coney Barrett and sent cardboard cutouts in their place. The stunt made a mockery of one of the Senate’s core responsibilities, and I suspect that it played at least a small role in the Democrats’ poor showing in November’s legislative races.

Unfortunately, such spectacles are not limited to the United States. Earlier this week, three right-leaning Israeli lawmakers boycotted the meeting of that country’s Judicial Appointments Committee, evidently believing that their absence would prevent a quorum and preclude the Committee from appointing two Israeli Arabs to judicial positions.

They were wrong. The law allows the committee to meet with any number of members present, as long as there are at least seven members on the committee roster. Because the boycotting politicians never resigned from the committee, the committee had the requisite number of members to move forward even in their absence. Ultimately, the committee appointed 61 judges, include one of the Arab candidates.

If there are good reasons to oppose a judicial nominee, by all means politicians should vote to oppose. But preventing the wheels of government from operating purely for partisan gain harms the judiciary and insults the public.

Rwanda ends recruitment exams for judges

The Rwandan government has changed its system for recuiting judges, ending the practice of requiring judicial candidates to pass specific recuitment exams. Instead, judges will now be political appointees. Under the lew legislation:

judges shall instead be appointed by the High Council of the Judiciary upon recommendation by the Bureau of the Judiciary.

They will be appointed based on their integrity, expertise and excellence they are known of in their career, and in their normal private life, other than gauging their capacity on their level of passing recruitment tests.

I don’t pretend to know enough about Rwanda’s political or judicial system to opine on the motivations for the change. But if a state that traditionally has employed a career judiciary –with testing and training up of young judges up front — suddenly moves to a system of politically appointing judges as a capstone to their legal careers, it’s certainly noteworthy.