A sweeping blueprint for change
After slightly over a year under the stewardship of Chief Justice Rogers, the Judical Branch is readying itself for some wholesale changes. The Public Service and Trust Commission, appointed by the Chief Justice, released a 57 page report, chronicling all that is wrong with the Judicial Branch and what is going to be done to fix it.
Some proposed changes:
Too often, the public, jurors and attorneys are unhappily surprised by what the courts do or don’t do, the study notes. Examples: the unrepresented litigant facing a housing foreclosure, the lawyer disillusioned by “arguing motions to a different judge each time” in a complex case, or jurors officiously herded from place to place, to sit and wait, without explanation. Such experiences “can lead to an overall perception of an ineffective, inconsistent and unfair judicial system.”
This part of the plan aims to increase efficiency of case management and court practices, which currently “vary from court to court, resulting in confusion and uncertainty for attorneys and litigants,” according to the report.
It also said the courts need to be more user-friendly for people without legal representation. This means more forms in “plain language,” the committee says, and more educational tools for people who represent themselves.
There are some interesting substantive proposals too:
considering the feasibility of assigning a case to a specific judge for the duration of the case;
considering the merit of judges’ specializing in certain areas of the law; for example, land use appeals, trademark, patent and mass tort litigation
This Commission received complaints and recommendations from lots of “focus groups”. They are available in this hefty pd file. The recommendations from the public defender’s office start at page 308. I have to say that I’m quite happy with how frank they are and quite alarmed and disappointed at the same time that some of these things (if not all) are going on in our courts.
The bottom line is that the Court system represents how we as a State treat our citizens. Above all, there must be an appearance of fairness and impartiality emanating from the court system. Based on my experience, and confirmed by the recommendations in that study, that is severely lacking. That is a shame, but certainly not unexpected. It is what happens when people forget what they do, why they are where they are and what the impact of their decisions and opinions will be.
In a sense, we’re not unlike lawprofs sitting in their ivory towers. We get caught up in the law and forget that the law affects real people and has real-life consequences. It wouldn’t be too bad if once in a while we all got smacked in the face with that reality. It would make us a better, more civilized and more humane society.
I can only hope that the result of this Commission and these “sweeping” changes aren’t cosmetic – like a bandage on a severed limb.
Admitting the problem is half the battle, but you never get points for winning only half.
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about 3 years ago
As an attorney with a civil practice (labor and employment law) that is primarily federal, the two aspects of the state judicial system that I find most appalling are precisely the points that the report indicates it will “consider.”
Having cases shuffled from judge to judge with no continuity, rhyme or reason all but openly encourages counsel to file meritless motions to create delay. And, yes, it is terribly disheartening to tell your client that issue x is a settled matter of law that is beyond any reasonable dispute only to have a judge look at you as if you had just grown a second head because he or she is utterly unfamiliar with the substantive law in that area.
about 3 years ago
A few years ago, I represented three men in Detroit on littering charges. The case was heard in the District Court for Detroit, which is the trial court of inferior jurisdiction–misdemeanors, traffic, landlord-tenant, small-claims, general civil cases under $25,000, and preliminary exams in felony cases. The judge to whom we were assigned heard only cases involving littering, blight ordinance matters, and commercial auto lot ordinance violations, usually a charge of parking the inventory on the street, instead of on the dealer’s lot. Our case was always heard on a Wednesday, because that’s the day of the week when she heard cases from the Fourth and Ninth Detroit Police precincts. That helped the police schedule their officers. This must have been boring work for the judge, though a pretty good job at $100,000+ per year, but it was at least a predictable schedule for me.
In my jurisdiction today, one judge does about 95% of the divorce cases and related issues, while the other two do all the criminal work. The problem with such practices is that divorce, or criminal work, can get boring quickly, and there has to be some way, in the larger jurisdictions, for judges to transfer periodically between one kind of docket and another, to avoid burnout.
about 3 years ago
“The bottom line is that the Court system represents how we as a State treat our citizens.”
A wee bit of an overstatement, no? I’d say “…a certain, small segment of our citizens.” Most people never encounter our civil or criminal courts. And that’s a good thing, for reasons other than any failings of the judicial system.