Category: News

The SJI Board of Directors has established Priority Investment Areas for FY 2017 grant funding.  SJI will allocate significant financial resources through grant-making for these Priority Investment Areas (in no ranking order):

• Self-Represented Litigation – Promoting court-based self-help centers, online services, and increasing use of court-based volunteer attorney programs.
• Language Access – Improving language access in the state courts through remote interpretation (outside the courtroom), interpreter certification, courtroom services (plain language forms, websites, etc.).
• Reengineering to Improve Court Services and Performance – Assisting courts with the process of reengineering, regionalization or centralization of services, structural changes, improving performance, and reducing cost to taxpayers while providing access to justice.
• Remote Technology – Supporting the innovative use of technology to improve the business operations of courts and enhanced services outside the courtroom. This includes videoconferencing, online access, educational services, and remote court proceedings.
• Human Trafficking and the State Courts – Through the Human Trafficking and the State Courts Collaborative, addressing the impact of federal and state human trafficking laws on the state courts, and the challenges faced by state courts in dealing with cases involving trafficking victims and their families.
• Guardianship, Conservatorship, and Elder Issues – Assisting courts in improving oversight of guardians/conservators to prevent fraud of the elderly and the incapacitated, to include establishing court visitor programs, electronic reporting and monitoring, and guardian training.
• Juvenile Justice – Innovative projects that have no other existing or potential funding sources (federal, state, or private) that will advance best practices in handling dependency and delinquency cases; promote effective court oversight of juveniles in the justice system; address the impact of trauma on juvenile behavior; assist the courts in identification of appropriate provision of services for juveniles; and address juvenile re-entry.
• Fines, Fees, and Bail Practices – Assisting courts in taking a leadership role in reviewing fines, fees, and bail practices to ensure processes are fair and access to justice is assured; implementing alternative forms of sanction; developing processes for indigency review; and transparency, governance, and structural reforms that promote access to justice, accountability, and oversight.  Projects that address this Priority Investment Area will inform the work of the Conference of Chief Justices/Conference of State Court Administrators (CCJ/COSCA) National Task Force on Fines, Fees, and Bail Practices

The Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA), released its 2015-2016 policy paper recommending specific policies and practices that courts can adopt to minimize the negative impact of legal financial obligations (LFOs) and end so-called “debtors’ prisons,” while ensuring accountability for individuals violating the law.

This paper examines the growth of debt imposed by legislative bodies through courts and the incarceration that results from failure to pay ,as well as significant collateral consequences incarceration brings to those unable to pay.  The paper discusses the issues created by reliance on funding courts through fine and fee revenue and the impact of using private for-profit entities to collect court-related LFOs.

“COSCA has long advocated against the practice of funding courts and other government activities through fees.  In this paper COSCA advocates for lawful, effective, and just policies toward those who are ordered to pay fines and fees,” said Arthur Pepin, the President of COSCA and Director of the New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts.  “The objective is compliance, whether through payment in money, performing community service, or creating alternative ways to satisfy the public policy behind the imposition of fines and fees.  Incarceration must remain as the ultimate sanction for those who are able to pay but willfully refuse to do so.”

Recommendations included in the paper focus on:

• strengthening the capacity of courts to assess the ability to pay through the use of automated tools or other existing means tests;
• adopting practices that reduce failures to appear, such as using phone call and text message reminders of pending court dates;
• expanding and improving access to alternatives to incarceration, such as community service;
• ensuring judges have the authority to impose alternatives for those unable to pay; and,
• ultimately, imposing jail time for an offender’s willful refusal to pay.

The press release for this paper notes that this is not the first time COSCA has addressed similar issues.  In 2012, COSCA issued a policy paper with the position that courts should not be treated as revenue centers. In that paper, COSCA outlined a series of principles, including:

1. Courts should be substantially funded from general governmental revenue sources, enabling them to fulfill their constitutional mandates.
2. Neither courts nor specific court functions should be expected to operate exclusively from proceeds produced by fees and miscellaneous charges.
3. Optional local fees or miscellaneous charges should not be established.

This new policy paper, and other COSCA papers are available online.

Courting Justice is an unprecedented multi-city town hall series that invites state supreme, appellate and trial court judges to step down from the bench and listen to new perspectives on how the United States court system can better deliver justice for all. With support from SJI, these town halls have enabled the public to voice their concerns and share solutions on how to rebuild public trust in the judiciary. The second town hall was held in Little Rock, Arkansas, on September 23, 2016. Videos from each of the Town Hall meetings are available on the National Center for State Court’s Courting Justice website.

The SJI Board of Directors met on September 12, 2016,  at the Multnomah County Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, to make decisions on quarterly grant applications and awarded a total of eighteen (18) new grants.

One Strategic Initiatives Grant (SIG) was awarded to the National Center for State Courts to evaluate online dispute resolution projects in New York and Utah.  One Project Grant was approved for the Arkansas Supreme Court Commission on Children, Youth, & Families for statewide implementation of juvenile justice reforms.

Nine (9) Technical Assistance (TA) Grants were approved, including: the Missouri Office of State Courts Administrator for a municipal court technology consolidation project; the New Orleans, Louisiana, Municipal Court for an assignment and case management plan consolidating Municipal and Traffic Courts; the Supreme Court of the U.S. Virgin Islands for implementation of administrative unification of the Supreme and Superior Courts; Juvenile probation performance measurement development for the Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas; and, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) for a project to assess and address human trafficking in the CNMI.

Seven (7) Curriculum Adaptation & Training (CAT) Grants were approved, including: support to the Supreme Court of Ohio for a court interpreter improvement program; the Maryland Judiciary for faculty development education; the New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts for Safe Exchange Supervised Visitation (SESV) Practice Standards online training; and, the National Judicial College (NJC) for human trafficking education for state court judges.

 

A recently released report, titled Call to Action: Achieving Civil Justice for All, is the result of more than two years worth of research and discussion by a blue-ribbon group of legal and judicial leaders. The committee included state chief justices, trial court judges, court administrators, attorneys, and academics, and was supported by an SJI grant to the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) and the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) at the University of Denver (SJI-13-P-201).  It recently received the endorsement of the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) and the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA).

“This is a call to action for state court leaders across the country,” said Chief Justice Thomas Balmer of Oregon, who chaired the committee that produced the report. “Our courts need to resolve disputes fairly—but also at lower cost and with less delay. “

The recommendations are designed to meet the challenges of contemporary civil caseloads by taking advantage of modern technologies and highly trained court staff to provide effective oversight and timely intervention to move civil cases to resolution.

The report provides a comprehensive framework that features:

• Procedural reforms implemented in a variety of state courts that have been empirically tested and shown to substantially improve civil case processing;
• A right-sized staffing model for civil case processing that delegates substantial responsibility for routine caseflow management to specially trained professional staff, supported by effective case automation, permitting judges to focus on tasks that require their unique training and expertise;
• A Pathway Approach to caseflow management that assigns cases at filing based on the expected amount of court involvement needed to resolve the case, but offers sufficient flexibility for reassignment as the needs of the case change over time; and
• A renewed focus on high-volume calendars that comprise the vast majority of contemporary civil caseloads, improved access for self-represented litigants, and greater attention to uncontested cases and greater scrutiny of claims to ensure procedural fairness for litigants.

“We need a legal process that can fairly and promptly resolve disputes for all Americans,” said Mary McQueen, president of the NCSC. “These recommendations, when implemented, will enhance public confidence in our system of civil justice.”

“The civil justice system is mired in misperceptions and inefficiencies,” said IAALS Executive Director and former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Love Kourlis.

The full report is available online.  Both the NCSC and IAALS have committed to working with state courts to implement the recommendations.

 

Excessive cost and delay have been a chronic complaint about the American civil justice system for more than a century.  Recently, some jurisdictions have implemented procedural reforms and improved civil case automation and staffing that show significant improvements in civil case processing.

The NCSC report summarizes the impact of reform efforts in four jurisdictions and estimates the potential impact in terms of litigant costs for attorneys and expert witness fees.  The four reform projects include: a case management system with specially trained court staff implemented in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court (Miami-Dade County) to manage the 2008-2009 mortgage foreclosure crisis; amendments to pleading and discovery requirements implemented on a pilot basis in New Hampshire; amendments to discovery procedures statewide in Utah; and a comprehensive expedited civil case processing track for cases under $100,000 statewide in Texas.

The precise impact of these reforms varied from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; however, all of them ultimately had some impact on the settlement rate, time to disposition, or other key case processing measures.  As settlement rates increased and settlement occurred earlier in the litigation process, litigants avoided costs associated with expensive court proceedings such as summary judgment hearings and bench or jury trials.

The paper concludes with a brief discussion on whether reduced litigation costs will result in increased litigant satisfaction, and whether litigation tasks undertaken on their behalf are worthwhile.

 

With support from SJI, the National Association for Court Management (NACM) live-streamed educational sessions and keynote speeches from the 2016 annual meeting.

In the event you were not able to join your state court colleagues in Pittsburgh, plenary and workshop videos, recorded live from the event, are now available online.  NACM encourages you to share these educational sessions with others using the #NACM2016 hashtag and by forwarding the link.

NACM recorded plenary sessions, workshops, and other proceedings each day of the conference.  Over 500 attendees, vendors, and state court subject matter experts from across the country attended the annual meeting, and are great resources for follow-up.  Hundreds attended keynotes and breakout sessions that were live-streamed.  Where possible, presenter information is also included for your reference.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark your calendars—the NACM Midyear Conference will be held in Portland, Oregon, February 5-7, 2017.

 

The Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) and Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) Pandemic and Emergency Response Task Force has recently published a new tool for courts titled, Preparing for a Pandemic: An Emergency Response Benchbook and Operational Guidebook for State Court Judges and Administrators.  This project was supported by SJI.

Facilitated with expertise provided by the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), the Task Force highlights emergency preparedness as a necessary element of the court planning process. The objective is to prompt state and local court leaders without an existing pandemic benchbook to create one and keep it regularly updated,  and their judicial officers and court staff trained. The benchbook briefly touches on recent natural disaster and public health crises where courts and their partners worked together to ensure continuity of operations.

One of the features of the benchbook is its informed perspective that the Task Force assembled through both and extensive literature review and a visit to the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Nebraska Medicine’s biocontainment unit.  The Guide addresses a cadre of specific legal issues, authority, and notification that must occur.  Content by chapter includes the following:

• Chapter 1 – Jurisdiction of Public Health Issues
• Chapter 2 – Executive Branch Authority in a Public Health Emergency
• Chapter 3 – Searches, Seizures, and Other Government Actions to Ensure Public Health
• Chapter 4 – Proceedings Regarding Limitations on Individual Liberties and the Rights of Petitioners
• Chapter 5 – Model Orders and Court Rules

After detailed appendices and references, which provide extensive content regarding the nature of a pandemic caused by biological hazards, examples of quarantine processes, and the order of agencies which should be notified and enlisted for assistance, Part II offers a template  for a benchbook that addresses the legal questions that could arise during a pandemic.  Some of the key issues addressed in the template include: Implications for the Courts; Powers of the Chief Justice or State Court of Last Resort; Appearance of Individuals Posing a Potential Threat to Public Health; Juror Management Considerations; Additional Judicial Personnel; Consolidation of Cases; Emergency Court Closure and Relocation of Court; Limiting Public Access to the Courts; Communication; and, Technology Preparedness

The Guide was dedicated in memory of former Arkansas Chief Justice Jim Hannah, who served as CCJ President when this grant was awarded and whose leadership formed the Pandemic Response Task Force.

 

A new online curriculum has been developed to help state courts understand how to process the increasing numbers of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) coming into the United States.

Over the last several years, the number of UACs from Central America has been steadily rising, and this trend is anticipated to lead to an increase in filings in state juvenile courts on behalf of UACs seeking court findings to support applications for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status.  With SJI support, the Center for Public Policy Studies and the National Center for State Courts developed the Unaccompanied Immigrant Children in the State Courts online curriculum.

The online curriculum will increase understanding among state court judges, court administrators, and court stakeholders about: 1) federal immigration law, policy, and practice, and the impact on state courts of cases involving UACs; 2) how the work of the state courts in cases involving UACs intersects with the needs of the federal immigration system; 3) the different types of cases and matters where UACs might appear in state courts; and 4) the potential role of the state courts in providing factual findings in cases involving UACs.  The contents of the curriculum include an inventory of core elements that should be included in educational programs for state court practitioners when working with UACs, along with variations in the core elements that target the needs of state-court-level trial-court-level, and juvenile- and dependency-court-focused programs.  Also available on the site are downloadable PDFs of the Guide for State Courts in Cases Involving Unaccompanied Immigrant Children, and the Unaccompanied Immigrant Children and the State Courts quick reference information card.