Last Thursday the American Bar Association co-sponsored a program aimed at raising awareness of the effects of a shrinking court system called. The program was titled “Are Courts Dying? The Decline of Open and Public Adjudication.” It was held at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.
With less funding for courts and legal services, and fewer people able to afford legal fees and lawyers, many are concerned about the quality of justice being administered. Further, even with less people litigating in court, the existing workload may still be too much for the diminished court system to handle, especially in light of sequestration and other budget cuts.
Panelists Tani Cantil-Sakauye, chief justice of the California Supreme Court and Wallace B. Jefferson, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, offered warnings about what could happen if the shrinking-court trend continues, according to information from the ABA. “If we don't help people protect [people’s] rights, no one else will do it,” says Jefferson.
He also said it will be a “disaster” if people continue to give up on the court system. Many are avoiding courts, opting for private arbitration while others are having trouble affording lawyers. Cantil-Sakauye says there was even talk in California about allowing non-lawyers assist low-income litigants, but there are too many concerns regarding regulation to move forward on that front.
“It raised a can of worms about who will license and regulate these people. And besides, why should it be the poor who have to rely on non-lawyer providers?” she says. During a hearing late last month Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) emphasized the detrimental impact sequestration—an across-the-board spending cut aimed to reduce the national deficit—has had on the court system.
According to information from uscourts.gov, a number of legal experts also expressed similar concerns at the hearing. “The sequester is slowing the pace, increasing the cost, and potentially eroding the quality of the delivery of justice,” says Coons, chairman of Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Bankruptcy and the Courts. “The irony is that cuts to the Judicial Branch… don’t actually save taxpayers any money. The cases will still be adjudicated, just at a slower pace and at a higher cost.”
Then, in early August, Coons, along with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Bankruptcy and Courts Subcommittee, sent a letter to the executive director of the Judicial Conference of the United States, which oversees the Administrative Office of the Courts. Again he raised concerns about sequestration and the impact it will have on services from federal defenders, and the constitutional right to counsel provided by the Sixth Amendment.
“Unlike other areas of the federal government, the judiciary does not have discretion to ‘do less’ in a sequester environment,” the letter reads. “Federal Courts cannot turn away cases over which there is proper federal jurisdiction. The government must provide indigent criminal defendants with counsel in order to try them.”
It goes on to point out that personnel costs make up a large portion of the judiciary budget and sequestration for the judiciary basically equates to layoffs and furloughs. And it’s not just the federal courts that are feeling the impact of the nation’s financial woes and spending cuts to the court system.
The California Judicial Branch website lists some of the impacts budget cuts have had on its own court system. Since 2010; 39 courthouses and 77 courtrooms in still-open courthouses have been closed; 30 courts have reduced hours at public service counters; and 15 courts have instituted limited court service days. According to the ABA, though, Cantil-Sakauye said there is hope, with 2013 being the first year since the beginning of the recession that state revenues are coming in higher than projected.
Other states, too, are experiencing slow improvement. And with that improvement there is a need for a multi-branch partnership to “rebuild the courts,” and recognize the importance of augmenting programs that have been ravaged during the recession. “We have hit bottom, and we’re starting to climb,” Cantil-Sakauye says, “but it will be a slow climb.”
Dan Sabbatino is an award winning journalist whose accolades include a New York Press Association award for a series of articles he wrote dealing with a small upstate town’s battle over the implications of letting a “big-box” retailer locate within its borders. He has worked as a reporter and editor since 2007 primarily covering state and local politics for a number of Capital Region publications, including The Legislative Gazette.