Tag: Year End Report

Roberts to Congress: Thanks, but we’ve got it all under control

For 2022, the Chief Justice leans into an alternative view of judicial independence. Will it be enough to keep Congress at bay?

Chief Justice Roberts’s 2021 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary, dropped (as always) on New Years Eve, struck a more substantive and somewhat edgier tone than in years past. The Chief Justice identified three particular areas of focus for the Judicial Conference of the United States in the coming year: addressing financial disclosure and recusal obligations for federal judges, monitoring new mechanisms for reporting and stopping workplace harrassment, and preventing undue forum shopping in patent cases.

All three of these issues have been the subject of regular, and sometimes intense, Congressional scrutiny in recent years. But the Chief Justice’s report largely rejects the prospect of legislative fixes. Rather, consistent with the federal courts’ approach to the workplace harrassment scandal when it first broke in 2017, Roberts assures his readers that the Judicial Conference is willing and able to handle each of these issues internally. 

It’s not to see why the Chief Justice would go this route. As this blog has routinely described, the federal courts (like all courts, and indeed all organizations) operate under constant pressure from their external environments. Neoinstitutional theory identifies three types of pressure: coercive (the need to comply with legislation and other government mandates), mimetic (the need to be in line with similar institutions in order to maintain legitimacy), and normative (the need to adhere to social and professional norms). The federal courts face all three types of pressure, but are particularly susceptible to coercive and normative pressures. If the federal judiciary is not seen as ethical and apolitical, it will face Congressional action and lose legitimacy with the bar, the media, and the public. 

There is no question that the pressure has been turned up in recent weeks. The Wall Street Journal‘s expose on federal judges who failed to recuse from cases in which they held a financial stake was a significant blow to the judiciary, and has invited Congressional hearings. Some in Congress have used the scandal as an opportunity to resurrect additional transparency proposals, including courtroom cameras and free PACER access. And, of course, the progressive effort to pack the Supreme Court looms in the background, along with the ongoing politicization of judicial confirmation hearings and the Supreme Court’s forthcoming decisions on abortion and gun rights. It is fair to say that the federal courts are currently facing more external pressure and scrutiny than at any time since the 1960s. Continue reading “Roberts to Congress: Thanks, but we’ve got it all under control”

Chief Justice issues 2020 Year End Report

Per longstanding tradition, while you were anxiously coaxing 2020 into oblivion last night, the Chief Justice quietly issued his Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary. Also per tradition, this year’s report features more musty anecdotes about the courts, this time focused (predictably) on pandemics. The Chief Justice congratulates the entire court system on its turn to video hearings and trials in the wake of the COVID-19 spread.

Kudos are indeed in order for reacting relatively swiftly, but I will save my formal congratulations for when the federal courts embrace technology with foresight and a commitment to transparency. Here’s an area where the federal courts could learn much from their state counterparts, if they are willing.

Chief Justice Roberts releases 2019 Year-End Report

While you were dancing away the last hours of 2019, or perhaps just watching Ryan Seacrest, Chief Justice John Roberts was undertaking the time-honored tradition of releasing his Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary under cover of darkness. This year’s theme was the judiciary’s importance in maintaining civic education, especially in an era in which fewer Americans are exposed to the brilliance of our Constitution.

I shall have more to say about this theme in a future post, but for the moment I will highlight a few of the more interesting statistics about the work of the federal courts over the past year:

  • Cases argued before the Supreme Court continued to decline, with only 73 arguments taking place during October Term 2018. Compare that to 175 arguments back in OT 1984.
  • In the federal district courts, civil case filings rose about 5%, and criminal filings rose about 6%.
  • Bankruptcy petitions are back on the rise after a one-year drop in 2018.

Chief Justice releases Year-End Report

Per tradition, at 6 p.m. EST on December 31, Chief Justice John Roberts released his Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary. Each year, the report focuses on one specific topic. For 2018, the topic–appropriately–was the work of the federal Working Group on Workplace Conduct.

Many have already focused on the #MeToo aspect of this year’s report. I want to highlight something a bit different. Far beyond discussing the specific outcomes of the Working Group’s activities, Roberts spent quite a bit of time discussing the internal mechanisms by which the Working Group’s suggestions were implemented. He highlighted the roles of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, and the various Judicial Conference subcommittees that studied and implemented the Working Group’s recommendations. The enduring image is one of a slow, careful, and multi-layered process–exactly the image the Chief Justice was likely aiming for.

Although it never goes on for more than a few pages, the Year-End Report may be the most deliberately written document that the Chief Justice writes all year. One has the sense that every word had been carefully and repeatedly vetted. That the Chief would dedicate significant space to describing (even at a high level) the federal courts’ internal committee work is telling, and a welcome development for students of court organization.

Happy New Year to all.

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.