THE SCOPE AND LIMITS OF COURT REFORM

Abstract

Court reform may be as old as courts themselves. Old Testament records that when sat to judge the people . . . , the people stood by Moses from the morning unto the evening because he could-not judge all of their disputes by himself. Jethfo recommended that Moses train others in the law, delegate to them the small matters, and reserve for himself the hard causes.1 modern era of court reform in America dates from 1906, when Roscoe Pound, then a young midwestern law professor, addressed the American Bar Association on The Causes of Popular Dissatisfaction with the Administration of Justice. Jethro and Pound both focused on delay, inadequate resources, and inefficient organization ? and both assumed that administrative reform rather than reform of the substan tive law was central to the struggle for justice. These focuses and assumptions characterize court reform efforts to the present day. This article treats court reform as one species of administrative reform. It describes the elements and characteristics of court reform, and suggests how the assumptions of court reform parallel those of executive and legislative reform. It then spells out the limits inherent in current court reform efforts, and recommends new directions for the future. Courts have a distinctive function, and their adminis trative problems have often been defined with distinctive terminology. It is hoped, however, that an analysis of American court reform will contribute to general theories of institutional reform. Elements of Court Reform Over the years, the writings of court reformers and the pronouncements of court reform organizations have shared a number of goals and objectives: 1. Consolidation of court structure and jurisdiction. In many states, trial courts have been numerous and jurisdictions overlapping. For example, until 1973, Alabama law named 20 different trial courts.2 Under those conditions, coordina tion was difficult, transfer of judges from less crowded to more crowded courts was prohibited, and appellate procedure was complex. A staple of state court reform has therefore been a constitutional amendment to reduce the number of different trial courts, sometimes to only one (as with the Illinois Circuit Court) or two (one trial court of general and one of limited jurisdiction) sitting in locations throughout the state. North Carolina's constitution calls for a single court of justice in the state.3 2. Simplification of court procedures. expensive and often lengthy trial by battle, where adversaries used surprise and sought technicalities to assure victory, was to be regulated by rules of procedure drafted by legal professionals and subject to control and amendment by the court system. These rules would replace a mix of case law and legislative codes; thus they could be kept flexible, up-to-date and uniform without continuous legislative amendment. model was the 1938 Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which simplified procedure by merging legal and equitable proceedings, and were drafted by a committee of lawyers under the direction of the United States Supreme Court.

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