|
BAR/COURT STATE AND LOCAL JUSTICE IMPROVEMENT
ACTIVITIES—2003
American Bar Association — Coalition
for Justice
The American Bar Association's Coalition for
Justice supports justice system reform at state and local
levels and urges that such efforts involve the community along
with judges and lawyers. Feedback from court and bar officials
is that the Coalition can best help in this endeavor by providing
current information on justice improvement activities underway
across the country. The Coalition thus conducts surveys of
state supreme courts, state and local bar associations, and
a selection of metropolitan trial courts. This is a report
on the 2003 survey. The survey instrument was mailed and posted
on the Internet in May. A total of 82 responses were received
by August.
1. Bar associations and courts engage in
a wide variety of justice improvement activities.
The results show over one thousand areas of activity in which
courts and/or bar associations currently work to improve access,
combat bias, upgrade judicial selection, enhance jury duty,
preserve judicial independence, inform the public, make the
courts more user-friendly, and otherwise improve the justice
system. Frequently the courts and bar associations collaborate
in these activities.
2. Increasingly, bars and courts are involving
non-lawyers in justice improvement.
The number of "justice initiative" activities-those
that involve non-lawyer community representatives along with
lawyers or judges-continues to grow. The ABA particularly
encourages justice initiatives as a way to improve our system
of justice because community involvement 1) brings fresh ideas;
2) generates broader support for reform implementation; and
3) by so doing, strengthens public trust and confidence in
our justice system.
3. Public trust and confidence is a key issue.
Seventy-five bars/courts report addressing public trust
and confidence in the justice system. This reflects continued
strong support since the 1999 National Conference on Public
Trust and Confidence sponsored by the ABA, Conference of Chief
Justices, Conference of State Court Administrators, and the
League of Women Voters in cooperation with the National Center
for State Courts.
Justice Initiatives
Justice initiatives represent the heart of the
effort to improve our justice system. By definition, justice
initiatives involve non-lawyers as well as lawyers or judges.
There are three types:
Citizens' conferences, town hall meetings,
and community forums are events held by courts or state
and local bar associations at which two-way communication
is established with non-lawyers on general or specific justice
issues. Thirty-seven bars/courts report 55 more community
events since 2001, bringing the cumulative number since 1995
to 143. This area of justice initiatives continues to show
the greatest increase - 31 percent in each of the past three
years. Of particular note were Utah State Courts' 27 public
hearings on racial and ethnic fairness that involved 1,500
residents and resulted in 75 proposals for change in law enforcement,
courts, and corrections.
Justice commissions, committees, and task
forces are on-going groups, with non-lawyer participants,
that identify and develop solutions to problems facing the
justice system. Forty-two bars/courts report having such groups,
identifying an additional 46 commissions/committees/ task
forces since 2001. This brings the cumulative total since
1995 to 262 this year, up from 216 in 2001. Arizona reports
the largest cumulative number (N=16) since 1995, which includes
current groups focusing on technology, minorities, judicial
education, probation, juvenile courts, alternate dispute resolution,
judicial ethics, and limited jurisdiction courts.
Futures commissions are bodies established
by state supreme courts to examine long-term possible scenarios
for the justice system and to make plans to meet those alternate
futures. Thirteen bars/courts indicated that they had futures
commissions, which are usually in existence for several years
before issuing a report. Illinois issued a report in 2002,
bringing the total number of state reports to 24.
Other efforts involving citizens or non-lawyer
groups were reported by 27 bars/courts. These included
Alaska Court System's Teaching Justice Network, Alabama State
Bar's work with the Appleseed Foundation and similar groups
on judicial selection and indigent defense issues, California
Administrative Office of the Courts' jury education program
for employers, and South Dakota Unified Judicial System's
urban/rural court study.
Traditional Activities
The activities in this category are numerous
and varied. By definition, traditional justice improvement
activities are carried out by courts and/or bar associations,
without active participation by non-lawyer members of the
community. The most popular activities involved access issues,
followed by public information, alternate dispute resolution,
and lawyer professionalism. Below is a list showing the number
of courts or bar associations that reported activity in each
category.
|
Access to justice, legal services, pro bono,
indigent defense
|
71
|
|
Public information and law related education (youth
or adult), e.g., peer mediation training in schools
|
66
|
|
Alternate dispute resolution (e.g. arbitration, mediation)
|
63
|
|
Lawyer professionalism, ethics, competency, client-lawyer
relations
|
59
|
|
Drug/alcohol abuse (see also problem solving courts)
|
54
|
|
Court funding, judicial impact statements
|
52
|
|
Family courts, family law, divorce (see also unified
family courts)
|
52
|
|
Self help (pro se)
|
50
|
|
Bias (gender, racial) in courts or profession
|
49
|
|
Special needs, e.g. domestic abuse, AIDS, disabled,
elderly, homeless (see also problem solving courts)
|
49
|
|
Judicial selection, compensation, or tenure or judicial
independence
|
48
|
|
Problem Solving Courts (e.g., community courts, drug
courts, domestic violence courts, mental health courts)
|
48
|
|
Civil justice laws, practices, and procedures
|
44
|
|
Juvenile justice including youth/teen courts
|
43
|
|
Jurors/juries
|
41
|
|
Criminal justice, crime prevention, corrections, death
penalty, gun violence
|
39
|
|
Surveys of the public and court users
|
37
|
|
User-friendly courts (e.g., information kiosks, ombudsman,
signage, children's waiting room)
|
36
|
|
Unified family courts (one judge/court team serving
all of a family's court needs)
|
25
|
|
Therapeutic justice, balanced and restorative justice
|
23
|
|
Other
|
14
|
The numbers above reflect activities that occurred
during the period since the last survey, i.e., approximately
between the spring 2001 and the spring 2003.
|
