Essay Sample on Court Management Trends

Introduction

Courts are government institution tasked with the authority of hearing, adjudicating and determining legal disputes between individuals within a state and administer justice in criminal, civil, administrative and constitutional fields of law. Different courts exist in the United States at distinct levels of government. Such, courts are managed differently. For instance, there are district courts, appellate courts and the Supreme Court of the United States all tasked with different roles and are managed separately. Court management refers to the administration of the resources in a court system to enable the court to administer its function of hearing and determining legal disputes. Therefore, the court management is significant in every legal system since it determines the efficacy and speed of the court system which in turn ensures the expeditious administration of justice to aggrieved parties in legal disputes (Chemerinsky, 2016). For instance, in the United States, the National Association for Court Management is a non-profit entity that provides education in professional court management to judges and court administrators. The purpose of this paper is to present a vivid illustration of the trends in the management of courts in the United States. The paper will also discuss how the implementation of specialized or alternative courts, court consolidation and restructuring of victim rights laws, as well as the changes the court agencies, impact the way courts complete their function. The paper will also by analyzing the effectiveness of the court changes.

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Specialized or Alternative Courts

Court management in the United States has encountered a myriad of challenges in the past. Such challenges include, but not limited to the massive number and the backlog of cases due to insufficient personnel in the court systems as well as long delays in the hearing and determination of cases. The challenges led to the development of specialized courts whose widespread adoption and implementation across the United States is one of the emerging trends (Chemerinsky, 2016). Specialized courts are also known as problem-solving courts, thus their mandate is to focus on one type of the offense, which is usually used in court management systems to expedite case processing and reduce the backlog of cases of a particular type in the courts.

Specialized courts emerged to improve the efficiency in the court management system in the USA. Some of the specialized courts in the U.S. court system include Patent Trial and Appeal Board, United States Court of Federal Claims, United States Tax Court, International Trade Commission, United States Court of International Trade and the United States Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Court. However, the specialized courts have limited jurisdiction on certain matters and only focus on a particular field of law. Specialized courts have also ensured the predictability, certainty, and accuracy of judicial decisions in a specific field of law. Appearing before a judge who specializes in a particular field of law is likely to result in a fairer decision compared to if the matter were to be decided by a generalist judge (Chemerinsky, 2016).

Additionally, certain changes have happened at the federal level to accommodate specialized courts. Article I of the United States constitution clause 8 provides that the legislative branch the power to constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court. Therefore, at the federal level, the Congress has converted specialized courts to constitutional status and back to the legislative status. The federal system, therefore, considers legislative courts as specialized courts. In addition to their regular judicial duties, they assist the legislative branch in the administration of specific congressional duties (Chemerinsky, 2016). Such changes have impacted the United States court management system, both positively and negatively. The positive impacts include improved case management, uniformity in judicial decisions and increased flexibility of the United States judicial system. The demerits of specialized courts as a trend include the judicial isolation of specialized courts and inadequacy in the number and quality of judges for the specialized courts.

Impact of Court Consolidation and Restructuring of Victims' Rights Laws

The consolidation and restructuring of victims' rights laws have happened both at the local and federal levels and is the other trend in court management. All the states in the USA and the federal government have now developed standard laws prescribing the manner in which victims should be treated. Aspects of victims' rights such as restitution, bail release, right to information and information about court events are now in standard form, and this has benefitted victims across the United States (Davis et al., 2012). Such consolidation and restructuring have also brought negative impacts both at the federal and local levels of government.

One such implication is the fact that research indicates that most prosecutors have had to bear additional costs due to the restructuring of victims' rights law. Such happens due to the need to hire new staff and provide additional resources. Research has also shown that the consolidation and restructuring of victims' rights laws have led to the change in the outcomes of cases even though on a smaller scale (Davis et al., 2012). The restructuring and consolidation of victims' rights have improved the quality of justice in the court systems in most states. However, the research done by Davis et al. (2012) indicates that most states do not have legislation that sets aside funds for the consolidation and restructuring of the victims' rights laws (Davis et al., 2012). The other challenge is the unwillingness of victims to take up the initiative and access the restructured laws. In conclusion, court consolidation and restructuring started and a great initiative but there is need to put proper reforms in place to have it fully functional.

References

Chemerinsky, E. (2016). Federal Jurisdiction. Aspen Student Treatise.

Davis, C. R., Henderson, J. N., & Rabbitt, C. (2012). Effects of State Victims' Rights Legislation on Local Criminal Justice Systems. Vera Institute of Justice.