Category: News

The 2017 National Association for Court Management (NACM) Midyear Meeting held in Portland, Oregon, earlier this month saw hundreds of court administrative professionals and partners come together to enhance their skill sets, discuss the state of state courts, and engage in structured and informal professional development opportunities.

For nearly a decade, SJI has been pleased to support both the annual and midyear meeting educational sessions offered by NACM through grants that promote content development, engage presenters, and more recently, record, live stream, and archive workshops and plenary sessions.  These grants were initiated when state courts drastically reduced, at both local and state levels, the funds available for professional development.  In an effort to keep court administrators and staff immersed in the latest trends, court technology, and evidence-based practices, NACM partnered with SJI to make content both live and archived, available to members and the larger state court community.

Live streaming and post-meeting access to materials, slides, and media continues to be popular with NACM members and court personnel across the United States.  The 2017 NACM  Midyear Meeting materials and videos are available online.

 

With support from SJI, a working group of court practitioners and other subject matter experts established by the Joint Technology Committee (JTC) of the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA), the National Association for Court Management (NACM) and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) assembled a NextGen Court Business Process Model.  Other participating organizations included the Court Information Technology Officers Consortium (CITOC) and the IJIS Institute (IJIS).

This report outlines the Court Business Process (CBP) Model that was developed and approved by the NextGen Court Technology Standards Working Group.  Its work updates and further informs information originally examined in 2003.  Developed in the first phase of the project and released in 2016, the CBP defined the case type layer of the model and initiated a secondary level of definition – business process categories.  As the project team commenced, it became apparent that the work could not be performed without also addressing a third layer of the model, the business process groups. The original project proposed to complete the second and third layers of the model during phase two, but a substantial part of this work already has been completed.

The NextGen approach to a CBP Model is designed to be unique and offers the capacity of understanding the work of the judicial branch in an entirely new way.  Some key elements are:

• Better modeling of the business processes can lead to more effective automation and improved court productivity.
• Within the context of reused elementary business processes, case management system modules that support those processes can be integrated and reused in a manner that precisely meets the needs of each particular court system.
• Provision of a clear and concise understanding of specific business processes in a format that is both comprehensive and economical will lead to greater intersection with Business Process Groups (claims, hearings, trials, etc.) and Business Process Categories (case type).

Second phase work includes NextGen Court Technology Standards that will address implementation of concepts.  Later this Spring, the JTC plans to release a follow-up report culminating all of this work.

 

The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) has released its annual State of the State Courts survey results.  The survey results yielded valuable information on public trust, procedural fairness, and other critical areas.  This year’s survey results showed an increase  in the public’s trust in the courts, with four in five people having direct interaction with the court system expressing satisfaction in procedural fairness.

The survey was conducted among 1,000 respondents by telephone between November 14 – 17, 2016.  Survey findings are considered accurate 19 times out of 20.

Key findings of the survey include:

• There are signs of positive momentum in public trust — but innovation and technology concerns persist;
• A glaring lack of understanding about court funding is reflective of misperceptions about government spending generally;
• If courts lead on fines and fees reform, the public will follow;
• The public believes that the ethnicity of a judge may impact fairness.

For more detail on the survey findings, read this six-page summary from the pollster, or download the presentation slides.

The NCSC also surveyed public opinion in previous years, and has archived the 2015 and 2014 survey results.

 

The Conference of Chief Justices and Conference of State Court Administrators Joint Committee on Elders and the Courts has approved the Strategic Action Plan – 2016 for the Adult Guardianship Initiative.

With support from SJI and the Retirement Research Foundation (RRF), the Center for Elders and the Courts is addressing guardianship and conservatorship issues in the state courts through the initiative.

The plan comprises a multi-year response that targets four key goals including:

• Develop and maintain a partnership of key stakeholders;
• Prioritize the protection and enhancement of individual rights;
• Promote modernization and transparency in the guardianship process; and,
• Enhance guardianship/conservatorship court processes and oversight.

A recent survey by the NCSC shows an estimated $50 billion in assets are currently under state courts’ watch in conservatorship cases across the country.  This number is based on projections from data from a handful of states.  Some 176,000 new conservatorship or guardianship cases were filed in state courts nationally in 2015, and there were an estimated 1.3 million open cases.  These statistics provide valuable insight to a growing national problem and how courts recognize and deal with the financial exploitation of people under a conservatorship.

 

With support from SJI and in partnership with the National Juvenile Defender Center, and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ), a new juvenile delinquency information card is now available that highlights the key elements of ensuring meaningful access to counsel for juveniles at initial appointment.

The card, titled “Honoring Gault: Ensuring Access to Counsel in Delinquency Proceedings,” is named after the 1964 case against Gerald Francis Gault, aged fifteen, who was sentenced to the state youth correctional facility until his twenty-first birthday for making an annoying phone call.  It was later determined by the U.S. Supreme Court that, no matter the age, the accused should receive meaningful access to counsel.

Included in the card are four key elements to ensuring meaningful access to counsel for juveniles, and ethical standards for consideration by the parties involved in the proceedings.

 

Courting Justice  follows a town hall format that invites state supreme, appellate, and trial court judges to step down from the bench and listen to new perspectives on how the state courts can better deliver justice for all.

Supported by SJI and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), airing on PBS and hosted by acclaimed journalist Tavis Smiley, Courting Justice is on a cross-country tour, engaging the public and judges in a conversation about the courts.

From litigants to public defenders, families of the incarcerated to prosecutors, multiple voices have shared their concerns and real-world solutions on how to rebuild the public trust in our judiciary.
The most recent episode was taped in Cleveland, Ohio, on December 8, 2016, and is now available online.  Panelists included: Ohio Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor; Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Ronald Adrine; Lakewood Judge Patrick Carroll; and, Former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Yvette McGee. Brown.

 

On December 10, 2016, the U.S. Senate confirmed Chief Justice John Minton from Kentucky to serve on the SJI Board of Directors.  Chief Justice Minton was nominated by the President on July 13, 2016.  He was elected to the Supreme Court of Kentucky in 2006, and reelected in 2014.  His fellow justices elected him as Chief Justice in 2008, 2012, and 2016.  Chief Justice Minton was in private practice for 15 years before serving as a Circuit Court Judge from 1992 to 2003, and a Kentucky Court of Appeals Judge from 2003 to 2006.  In 2016, He was elected by his fellow chief justices to serve as President of the Conference of Chief Justices and Chair of the National Center for State Courts Board of Directors.  He holds degrees from Western Kentucky University and the University of Kentucky College of Law.

In July 2016, the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) approved a resolution endorsing the Recommendations of its Civil Justice Improvements Committee. The Committee’s report, Call to Action: Achieving Justice for All, encourages the state courts to improve their civil justice systems by providing 13 recommendations.  Since then, the Call to Action and supporting materials have been accessed, downloaded, and reviewed thousands of times, garnering attention from all stakeholders, including state courts, academia, and the media.

The Civil Justice Initiative is supported by a partnership between the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), and Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) at the University of Denver.  With continued support from SJI, the NCSC and IAALS will promote the implementation of these recommendations in state courts across the nation.  This collaboration includes providing education, technical assistance, and practical tools to assist state and local courts in improving civil justice systems.

Expert technical assistance is available to state and local courts to implement the Recommendations of the CCJ Civil Justice Improvements Committee.  To be considered for this technical assistance, please download and complete the full CJI Implementation Request for Technical Assistance form, and email to Blake Kavanagh, at bkavanagh@ncsc.org.

An NCSC representative will contact you to discuss the request, including identification of appropriate experts and the scope of work anticipated.

 

Former SJI Board Chair Chief Justice Jim Hannah was posthumously inducted into the Warren E. Burger Society during the National Center for State Court’s (NCSC) Annual Recognition Luncheon on November 17, 2016.  Chief Justice Hannah, who passed away in January 2016 at the age of 71, had served as SJI Board Chair since 2010, and also served as President of the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) and Chair of the NCSC Board of Directors.  Attendees included 18 members of his family, along with members from the SJI Board of Directors.  The ceremony was hosted by Kentucky Chief Justice John Minton, CCJ President and Chair of the NCSC Board of Directors.  The Burger Society honors individuals who have volunteered their time, talent, and support to the NCSC in exceptional ways.  It is named for the former Chief Justice of the United States who helped found the NCSC in 1971.

Other inductees included: Wallace Jefferson, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas and current Partner at Alexander, Dubose, Jefferson & Townsend in Austin, Texas; Donna Melby, Partner with Paul Hastings, LLP in Los Angeles; Edward Mullins, Jr, Partner with Nelson, Mullins, Riley & Scarborough, LLP in Columbia, South Carolina; and Myron T. Steele, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Delaware and current Partner with Potter, Anderson & Corroon, LLP.

 

With support from SJI, the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) and the Texas Office of Court Administration partnered to evaluate the impact of the Texas Expedited Actions Rules, which were enacted in 2013 to reduce expense and delay in civil litigation.  The rules are mandatory for almost all civil cases involving monetary damages of $100,000 or less (“expedited actions”), and damages awarded for expedited actions cannot exceed $100,000.

The evaluation compared characteristics and outcomes of civil cases filed both before and after the expedited actions rules were enacted.  It also surveyed attorneys about the expedited actions rules and the impact on civil case management.  Students from Baylor University School of Law interviewed judges and attorneys to provide a more nuanced context about how the rules impacted strategic decision-making and calendar management in individual cases.  Analysis of the case-level data indicated that the Expedited Actions Rules had a positive impact on civil case processing.  In contract cases, settlements increased at the expense of summary judgment and trial outcomes, while trial rates grew in tort cases, replacing summary judgments.  The new rules also decreased time to disposition for cases that settled.  Cases disposed by trial or summary judgment experienced some initial delays, presumably due to the relative complexity of those cases, but cases lasting longer than 9 to 12 months resolved more quickly under the new rules.  It has already been observed that the apparent impact of the new rules appears to be a function of routine communications about the new deadlines and restrictions by court administration, rather than conscious decisions by judges and attorneys to change case management practices, which tends to highlight the importance of including court administration in educational programs about civil justice reforms.

The full report is online and will be featured in upcoming editions of the NCSC’s @TheCenter publication, and a new civil justice newsletter that will launch soon.