Word: districting
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...stopped people from going to the court in droves. Civil suits filed in federal courts, which outnumber criminal cases 4 to 1, increased from 87,321 to 138,770 between 1960 and 1978. Over 16,000 cases have been pending for more than three years in federal district courts, double the backlog ten years ago. "If court backlogs grow at their present rate, our children may not be able to bring a lawsuit to a conclusion within their lifetime," predicts Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe. "Legal claims might then be willed on, generation to generation, like hillbilly feuds...
...18th century when lawyers and judges were farmers and had to tend to their cows, says Boston Lawyer and Novelist (Friends of Eddie Coyle) George V. Higgins. "We do business in total and willful disregard for the telephone, the automobile and the computer. On opening day of a district court session, you can find 300 lawyers waiting around to get their cases scheduled, with their meters running." The trial date the judge wants often will not suit one or the other lawyer; when they finally agree, a witness will go out of town or fail to show up and trial...
...Sheer volume almost mandates it," says Judge Rothwax, who is careful to make sure the defendant agreed to the bargain and that it is fair. In New York, according to District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, the sentence a defendant gets from pleading guilty is not much different from the sentence he would get by going to trial. But in many other courts, clearing the docket, otherwise known as moving the business, becomes almost an end in itself...
...easier to weed out state and local judges. Since 1960, 48 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have created commissions to discipline judges for wrongdoing. A few of these commissions are effective: since 1975, the New York commission has removed ten judges, censured 65, suspended four, and 73 have resigned. California is now witnessing the unique spectacle of a public investigation of the state supreme court. At issue is whether some members of the court delayed announcing politically controversial decisions before an election in order to save Chief Justice Rose Bird from being ousted by the voters...
...creation of 152 new judgeships last year gave President Carter the chance to fulfill his campaign promise: "Why not the best?" He has managed to make Senators use "merit" selection committees in 24 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, but some flatly refused. Maryland's Senator Paul Sarbanes selected his former law partner; another, North Carolina's Robert Morgan, nominated his campaign manager. Carter has also diversified the bench to make sure the judges' backgrounds and attitudes more closely reflect the population's. When he took office, only 1% were female and only 5% were black or Hispanic...