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.

Houston Chronicle profiles Judge Lee Rosenthal

The Houston Chronicle has a very good profile of Lee Rosenthal, a highly respected federal district judge in the Southern District of Texas. Judge Rosenthal is well-known not only as an excellent jurist, but as a thoughtful and tireless worker on issues of court administration. I will add that she is a warm, gracious, and lovely person as well. A good read for anyone interested in the backgrounds of judges and (to some degree) the inner workings of the federal court system.

Hong Kong magistrate endures racial slurs after sentencing politician for baton attack

Hong Kong magistrate Bina Chainrai sentenced a local politician to three months in prison for hitting a pedestrian with a baton during pro-democracy protests in 2014. Dozens of supporters of the politician responded after the sentencing by hurling insults and racial epithets at Magistrate Chainrai. On Wednesday, several members of the Hong Kong bar condemned the slurs and pledged support for an independent judiciary.

The tone of the condemnations, however, struck me as a bit odd. One group stated, “Any attack on judges for reasons unconnected to their decisions, irrespective of their nationality, sex or other personal attributes that they possess, are wholly unacceptable and must be strongly condemned.” Another said that “personal attacks on a judge for reasons unrelated to the judgment is an attack on Hong Kong’s judicial independence.”

I have added emphasis to both statements to make the problem clear. Personal attacks on a judge are plainly unacceptable when they are based on the judge’s race, gender, nationality, and so on. But equally inappropriate–at least from the American point of view–are personal attacks on a judge based on the substance of the judge’s opinion. It is fine to challenge a judge’s reasoning, or suggest that the opinion will lead to bad policy, but ad hominem attacks are never acceptable.

The United States is struggling through its own crisis of civility these days. The President has issued crude tweets about judges on several occasions. Some self-styled progressives cheered when Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016. And a small cadre of academics are even trying to suggest that basic civility is a racist construct.

It’s sad to see the same problem infecting Hong Kong. Norms of civility must go hand in hand with the rule of law, in every nation and in every era. Critique judicial decisions, yes, but leave the personal attacks at home.

 

Irish judges: lack of pay raise could constitute gender discrimination

The Association of Judges in Ireland, the representative body for that country’s judges, has requested that the government restore judicial salaries to pre-financial crisis levels. New judicial appointees currently earn less than judges on the same court who were appointed before 2011.

In a questionable twist, however, the Association has argued that maintaining the lower salaries for new judges could constitute “indirect gender discrimination” because recent appointees include more women than before.

Come on. It’s hard to imagine why the Association would take such a specious position, especially with much more plausible arguments available. Ireland may not constitutionally protect judicial salaries, but surely the better case is that external control over judges’ pay wreaks havoc on judicial independence. Moreover, as the Association itself pointed out, similar discrepancies in teacher and health care worker pay were being addressed, leaving judges on the outside looking in.

Judges are naturally aware that their complaints about salary and benefits can sound elitist, especially when the even a “low” salary is well into six figures. But trying to invoke the specter of discrimination here is wildly counterproductive.

Chief Justice releases 2017 Year-End Report

For law geeks with small children, the highlight of every New Years Eve is the quiet posting of Chief Justice Roberts’s Year-End Report on the federal courts website. It is a predictably comfortable document that invariably begins with a 200-year-old anecdote, proceeds through a single chosen topic in 10th-grade detail, and ends with a brief recitation of court statistics. In other words, it’s a little like Dave Barry’s annual year-end column, if that column were written by John Roberts instead of Dave Barry.

This year the Chief Justice’s focus is on court preparedness in the face of terror and natural disaster — an appropriate enough topic in light of last year’s hurricane season.  He also includes a short discussion of the courts’ forthcoming internal sexual harassment investigation.

Finally, some interesting statistical notes:

  • The Supreme Court’s docket fell again, with a little under three percent fewer filings and only 61 signed opinions.
  • Filings in the Courts of Appeal fell sixteen percent, but civil appeals were actually up one percent.
  • Filings in the federal district courts fell eight percent, and bankruptcy filings fell two percent.

I will probably have more to say on these figures in subsequent posts.  In the meantime, Happy New Year.

 

The best of 2017

Thanks to everyone for reading this year!  Since its launch in late February, The Interdependent Third Branch has had almost 300 posts.  Here are twelve of my favorites, in case you missed them the first time.

Why this blog? (February)

Could the Ninth Circuit rule on its own split? (March)

Public interest in the Supreme Court is high, but knowledge is low. Should we worry? (March)

The President’s unforced error on ABA vetting (April)

The judicial workplace (April) and its follow-up, Ontario judge who wore MAGA hat into his courtroom receives 30-day suspension without pay; did the Ontario Judicial Council overrreact? (September)

How a single ministerial appointment provides a window into the institutional character of the courts (May)

Some thoughts on the effort to recall Judge Aaron Persky (July)

On quiet judicial turnover (July)

A remarkable look inside India’s overburdened court system (August)

Tweeting judges, revisited (November)

Why trial experience matters for new district judges (December)

Happy New Year — and check back for much more in 2018!

The local impact of judicial selection wars

The Dallas Morning News has a good story about the impact of longstanding federal judicial vacancies in Texas. For all the attention that President Trump has received regarding his judicial nominees, relatively few have been confirmed at the district court level. The article gives us a good look into districts where judicial emergencies stemming from longstanding vacancies are, unfortunately, a way of life.

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.