Word: civilizer
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...large mobile van with video-tape recorders so the court can come to the witness, rather than the witness to court. Judge McCrystal edits the film in his chambers or sometimes at home and shows it to a jury at trial. Result: McCrystal tries about three times as many civil jury cases as the average Ohio judge. He has been doing it this way for more than seven years, and he has never been overturned on appeal because of his use of technology. Yet the idea still has not caught on with other judges. Why? "Judges are the roadblock," says...
...Getting cases out of court that should not be there to begin with. Some argue that no-fault auto insurance can help clear the civil courts by eliminating many lengthy personal injury suits. Decriminalizing so-called victimless crimes, such as vagrancy, drunkenness, gambling and marijuana possession ?often randomly enforced?would ease the strain on criminal courts. Perhaps the most promising alternative is to arbitrate or mediate disputes rather than take them straight to court. Neighborhood justice centers set up by the justice department in Atlanta, Kansas City and Los Angeles have worked well, informally settling disputes like neighborhood squabbles...
...Eliminate juries in civil trials that are too long and too complicated for laymen. At the Conference of State Chief Justices last week, Chief Justice Burger strongly urged judges to consider this proposal, pointing out that it can take "not hours, but days" for the judge to explain the legal issues to jurors, who then cannot always be expected to understand or remember what the judge said. Burger noted that Britain, which has less delay in its courts than the U.S., has successfully abolished juries in most civil cases...
...their books requiring that defendants go to trial within a specified period. However, these laws do not always work: they are vague and ambiguous, and judges are lax in enforcing them. When the laws do work, there is a need for more judges to handle the load and civil cases are backed up. Lawyers complain that they do not have time to prepare their cases, and that means that some prosecutions simply get dropped. Because of such arguments, the Federal Speedy Trial Act, expected to go into effect last month, has been postponed by Congress for one year...
...have the real power of appointment. Sheer embarrassment is about the only check. When Senator Ted Kennedy tried to nominate Family Retainer Francis X. Morrissey for a federal judgeship in 1965, other lawyers began joking that Morrissey was boning up for the job by reading the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the rough equivalent of preparing for surgery by looking at Gray's Anatomy. Kennedy eventually withdrew Morrissey's name...