Sandra Day O'Connor
I'm delighted to help open this second National Conference on court management. Over the next few days, you're going to examine how to strengthen court management's contribution to the performance of the American judicial system. The insights you gain here, combined with your strong implementation efforts, when you go home, will benefit all of us for years to come. People look at the American judicial system in many different ways. There's considerable attention paid to the court on which I now sit, for better or for worse. But those who see the administration of justice and the United States only in terms of the work of the Supreme Court, only in terms of what some people call the broad and cutting issues of the law. Those people really have a very narrow focus on the American judicial system. I know as a former state court judge, that the amount of and the quality of justice in this country are determined and large measure by the day to day workings of our trial courts, far away from the Supreme Court and in fact, far away from most appellate courts generally. The great majority of cases filed in the courts of the United States are filed and are limited in specialized jurisdiction courts. Day in and day out, those courts and the general jurisdiction trial courts decide what contracts will be enforced, who will pay damages, who will be punished for criminal acts. The appellate courts day in and day out, review the trial courts work and refine the many elements of the law by which people live their lives. But courts affect people on a daily basis and other ways to jury service, as de tocqueville recognized long ago gives many people the most direct opportunity for government service they'll ever have. courts, moreover, are not simply dispute resolution agencies, family divisions of state trial courts and probation departments, for example, are inevitably involved in overseeing a wide range of social services necessary to implement their orders. In fact, despite all the changes in our judicial system over the last 200 years, it is as true now as it was when Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist that the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice is the great segment of society. It gives stability and ordered growth to the social and economic environment in which we do our work and live our lives. Because I know how important are the courts and which all of us work. I know how important that is that all these courts operate effectively. It's essential that they have the financial management skills and political savvy to obtain resources and the budget them effectively. The information systems that describe the courts operations must be reliable. And the records that document lawsuits must be properly stored and easily retrievable. Courts must have a means of accommodating legitimate public and media interest in what goes on in the court. jury service must present a realistic opportunity for service not just an opportunity to wait in the jury lounge. Courts must have creative and responsible personnel systems and effective educational programs. For judges and other court personnel. They must have effective case flow management systems. As important as these functions are however, they like judicial independence are not ends and themselves. courts do not exist to be well managed or to have efficient record keeping systems. These are just means to an end to improve the administration of justice, a fundamental promise in our Constitution, and in our constitutional system. Because I know the importance of what you do toward that end,
I'm really very pleased to share this evening with you. The theme of this conference is managing courts in changing times. Changes not as predictable as time, but it's just as inevitable and relentless. we see around us today astounding evidences of change. Established political alignments are shattering all over the world. Our own country is a different society than it was within short memory. courts are hardly immune from changes in the world around them. the scourge of drugs is transforming the docket said many of our trial courts, making them different institutions than they were even five years ago. The onslaught of technological innovation is enabling courts and lawyers to use Office procedures that change so fast. We're constantly adapting to new variations. The search for alternatives to to traditional dispute resolution processing is changing our court procedures. Some wonder whether the rise of private courts and rental judges may challenge the existence of the public court system as we know it. And science is forcing us to reexamine some of our basic concepts of life and death, with profound philosophical and legal implications that will continue to become grist for the courts work. But these changing times are exciting times in which to live. And there are exciting times in which to be engaged in the administration of justice. conferences like this one, provide each of us with the opportunity to step temporarily away from that relentless day to day pressure of coping with change, and to consider how we want our courts to deal with changing times, or how to prepare ourselves and our courts for the future. The British House of Commons was destroyed and one of the German air raids early in World War Two. In 1943, the house took up the question of how to rebuild it, whether to do so along the lines of the old structure, or who erect a contemporary building. Winston Churchill arguing for the old design, told the members of the House and his words that we shape our buildings, and afterwards, our buildings shape us, in fact, precisely because we know our buildings will shape us. We devote a great deal of energy and thought to planning. But our lives are shaped by much more than the physical structures that we inhabit. They're shaped by the organizations in which we do our work by the values those organizations embody and the ends they seek to serve. We try to shape those organizations today because in the future, those organizations will surely shape our lives and our work. I'd like to mention briefly this evening, something about shaping the future of our courts. What we do today to shape our courts and to shape the principles by which we manage them will determine how they perform their vital role in the future. How should we enter the future and try to shape it? to that question, we have to ask what how the future to shape us. We need plan blueprints, so to speak, to shape the changes that will come.
I think in that way we stand a chance of designing a future that will meet our best hopes and aspirations. Courts can do this in several ways. Some court administrative offices have planning unit so rather than agencies to undertake short range or Long Range Planning Commission's and task forces and several states have developed recommendations on how their courts might approach the future. My own state here in Arizona was one of them. Last year at the Arizona Commission on the courts file that's report called the future of the Arizona courts. With Chief Justice Gordon. That report recognized as the commission put it, the need for a balance between continuity and adaptability in the judiciary, between the need for stability and a realistic appraisal of the changes necessary. As we face a new century. Such guidelines are a part of the management outlook of any responsible chief judge or manager. Regardless of whether the court has a special planning unit or task force, assessing what how we want the future to look is as the Arizona report suggests, not a flashy process, but rather a sensible and a sober analysis of where we stand and where we should go. What management expert and social critic Peter Drucker has said of our national names in these changing times, is true as well as our system of justice. Drucker wrote that we don't need charisma or programs. But we do need clear goals. We do need vision. management's first job is to think through set and exemplify those objectives, values and goals. Now, identifying the goals that a court system should strive for is hardly an easy task. courts, unlike corporations cannot decide what business they want to be in. They can't courts can't take a service off the market simply because it isn't profitable. In fact, the fundamental goals of the courts are not set by the courts themselves. Rather, they're set by constitutions and by legislators, and by the needs of our citizens. Perhaps for that reason, courts have tried to satin meet basic standards. Over 50 years ago, the American Bar Association adopted a set of goals for judicial administration, which came to be known by Chief Justice Vanderbilt sprays as the minimum standards for judicial administration. The American Bar Association has since promulgated additional sets of standards, as have other organizations such as the National Advisory Commission on criminal justice standards and goals, and the conference of state court administrators. Recently, the Commission on trial court performance standards working under the National Center for state courts approved some 22 performance standards for trial courts. As the name implies, the standards focus on the performance of trial courts rather than on their structure and machinery. The focus, for example, is less on the number of judges are trained administrators, less on the kinds of procedures so processes that courts use and more on the results that court should achieve in such basic areas as access to justice, and timeliness, and independence and accountability. I understand the Commission's next task will be to develop a measurement system that trial courts may use to determine whether the performance is up to the standards. It's not, I think, something that I want to do tonight, to try to endorse any particular set of goals are standards to guide the courts in these times. But I do want to listen to few aspects of our courts and their management.
A few aspects that seem important to me as you look at a balanced approach and shaping the future of the courts. First, a fundamental similarity between courts as an institution and management as a discipline is that people are their reason to exist. And the stuff with which they work. People are the essence of a court system. We became judges, we became court managers to serve the people who come to the court for relief, and also to deal fairly with the people who are brought to court in voluntarily. Moreover, in the long run, courts can do justice for litigants only if those of us responsible for the operation of the system. Also have a do regard for the lawyers who appear in our courthouses and for the courtroom employees who keep the system running. The nation's judicial system has played a leading role in some ways the pivotal role in eliminating state sanctioned discrimination in many segments of our society. Fortunately, the fact that courts are called upon to redress discrimination has not blinded their leadership to the possibility of discrimination and subtle bias within the courts themselves. I refer to unfair treatment by judges and court staff of lawyers are litigants and unfair treatment of court employees based on gender, race or physical disability. It's encouraging that well over half the states have either established task forces or gender bias on gender bias in the courtroom, or in the court, workplace or our implement recommendations of such bodies. Can a smaller number of states have taken similar steps in the area of racial bias? I think these efforts are very important. Education is a key to correcting but lingering signs of bias remain in our courts. But the need for education of judges and court staff goes much further. In the 1938 American Bar Association judicial administration standards, there was no mention of judicial education. Today, the situation is quite different, has seen in the membership of the National Association of State judicial educators, the National judicial college, the Institute for court management and other organizations that exist to help the personnel of the courts adapt to new realities and challenges. Congress recognize the importance of education for state judges and court personal in 1986, when it created the state justice Institute, just as it had recognized the need for education within the federal courts in 1967, when it created the Federal Judicial center, but these changes helpful as they are, are hardly enough. Judges and court managers receive much less continuing education than their counterparts in private industry. And I hope that you will continue your work to change that. Education for court employees is essential because these employees by the offices they hold exercise, also a public trust. Because they exercise of public trust, we should insist on reasonable ethical codes for corporate employees. Not unlike those that govern judges, I think we should should encourage efforts such as those of the American Judah catcher societies model code of conduct for non Judicial Court employees. As you may know, this year marks the 50th anniversary of Missouri's adoption for certain events jurisdictions of the so called non partisan or commission system of judicial selection. The states have made considerable progress since then, in moving away from a partisan system of election of judges. I first became interested in judicial selection systems. during a time I served as a state senator here in Arizona.
Since statehood, this state had a system of electing all trial and appellate court judges. There was and I think still is a strong populist sentiment for the election of judges. Wireless State Senator, I co sponsored a bill to put a constant additional amendment on the ballot to authorize a Missouri type plan for the appointment of judges in Arizona. Although it passed the Senate, we were unable to persuade the House of Representatives to pass it. We then organized an initiative measure and gathered enough voters signatures to put the proposal before the voters of the state. It passed, but by a very narrow margin. But the efforts paid off, I was able to see firsthand the changes in the judiciary that occurred under the appoint of system. Overall equality of the judges improved in my view, under the merit selection system. And just as we take care to select judges on merit in many states, we should insist on merit selection of court employees. My second major point is that courts will adapt to changing times, only if they're willing to develop or adapt dispute resolution procedures that address the best interests of those that we serve. We've all heard a lot about alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. And these mechanisms are not a panacea for all overcrowding that plagues our courts. But I've seen enough of them to know that they have great promise. And their promise is not simply to relieve the burden on the court so low that certainly is part of it. The real promise that seems to me is to bring a more satisfactory means of achieving justice to people whose disputes are real and troublesome, but for which traditional court proceedings make little economic sense. Alternative Dispute Resolution is also a health tool for resolving certain types of disputes, such as family disputes, for which traditional court proceedings are simply less appropriate than other forums. In court, the decisions typically declare a winner or a loser. Often, that's not the best way to resolve a dispute, an ongoing dispute between people with ongoing relationships. Last year, I chaired a delegation of American judges and lawyers, who showed a similar delegation of judges and lawyers from Great Britain, something about our civil justice system in the United States. We took our guests to a hearing of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which Linda Finkelstein, whom I think is here helped to arrange we also to welcome to a demonstration of a civil trial at the Fairfax County Circuit Court, which court administrator Mark Safir no helped arrange. But I think our guests were perhaps most intrigued by a visit to the District of Columbia small claims court to see how it uses mediation to settle cases. A more impressive example of clear explanation and efficient, respectful processing of large numbers of people. And their claims just could not be found, in the right circumstances with the support of judges and court managers. Integrated alternative dispute resolution programs such as that one, give us our best hope to date of speeding the dispute resolution process to the satisfaction of the parties, and without the necessity of a trial.
My third point is that our system of judicial federalism is constantly changing and evolving. We need to continue to do all we can to make this unique dual system of courts work well. I'm sure many of you have had the experience of trying to explain our system of courts to foreign visitors, the visitors often throw up their hands and desperation because our dual system simply seems too complicated to grasp. But those of us who work in the American judicial system understand this aspect of our courts, and it generally works well. But the marriage however, between our federal and state courts, like any other marriage, requires that each partner show the other respect, courtesy and make a special effort to get along. There are many practical ways in which the two systems of courts can get along. And accommodating trial conflicts for example, or an pooling voter and other lists for drawer utilization. And as is also true of any good marriage are to judicial systems also need to continue to expand opportunities for communication and cooperation. Tomorrow, the conference of Chief Justices will be meeting in Washington DC, with the Judicial Conference of the United States to explore means of coordination between these two systems. And I'm sure that much good will come a bad meeting. But we all know that our two court systems are dual court systems are too large and complex to be coordinated simply from the top. Each of you must do what you can to ensure that our judicial federalism serves the processes of justice, rather than to accomplish. Fourth is the point that legislative actions influence court management every day. The legislative influences app to grow as citizens demand more accountability from the institutions of government. In these changing times of legislative and judicial relations, courts and legislative bodies need to be able to communicate with one another openly and effectively. The key is to enhance communication, while still protecting the essential independence of the judicial branch. The most obvious legislative impact on court management is in the area of court budgets. Believe me, I know something of the difficult financial situations in which many of your courts operate. I know for example, that my talk of creating buildings to shape our future may bring a little holiday to a judge or court manager who cannot plan a new courthouse. But Miss search for usable space for another court room or another clerk's office in a building that is already over capacity. But to be realistic, courts will probably always be somewhat underfunded. Courts cannot compete for funds in the same way other agencies and private groups can. Courts cannot trade favors, they can't agree to adopt different policies to smooth legislative compromise. On the other hand, however, having served in a state legislature, I have some sense of the demands on legislators time, and the numerous demands for scarce resources that legislators face. I also know however, that the great majority of legislators, local, state and federal are conscientious and our committed to the rule of law, and providing the machinery necessary to make the rule of law reality. Courts take advantage of that receptivity when they develop effective administrative offices that present legislators with convincing and well developed information. And the promise that appropriations of money once granted, will be spent wisely. Now, my final point tonight is that we need to promote the concept of management in the courts as a noble calling. Both the art and the science of management are essential ingredients in ensuring the administration of justice. Management takes many forms within the courts. I mentioned for example, our civil delay reduction program in this county, one of the first in the country.
The pilot program here. Step firm dates for discovery cut off and for trial, established an information system to monitor cases and use the pool of practicing lawyers to serve as pro tempore judges to enable us to be able to provide trials as promised. As a result of the program here, the average disposition time dropped almost 50%. And the pending caseload declined 36% compared to the rest of the court. The experiment was a tremendous success here and as now firmly established for all several divisions of the Superior Court in this county. This program succeeded for many reasons, but one of them was not that we had discovered some secret about how lawyers practice and how judges judge. It was because we determined to be managers to set goals today Turman how to reach them, and then do it. And as a national center for state court study set of the program, the chief judge of the court was crucial to the program success, both in keeping the court true to the program's goals as new members came to the court. And using the Office of the Chief Judge has a special source of assistance to ensure the credibility of scheduled trial dates. As many of you know that chief judge who instituted that program and made it work was judge Bob Broomfield. And he showed what effective management can accomplish. Case flow procedure is hardly the only kind of court management is you know better than I. Management is rarely glamorous. Its rewards are often deferred. While its demands are with you always. And these days are not in some ways that particularly appealing time to be in the public service. Indeed, public service appears to be the career of choice of fewer and fewer of our brighter young people. That dismal fact makes your mission today all the more important. You provide the courts with what Peter Drucker says the world itself needs in these times, commitment, terribly hard work, and competence. The theme of the conference, as we said is managing courts and changing times. I said as I began that we might remember the wisdom in Winston Churchill's advice to a war torn House of Commons that as we change our buildings, our buildings change us three years before watching the growing specter of war that would destroy the House of Commons and much else in Europe. The president of the American Junior capture society, David Simmons commented on the importance of what we now know as effective court management seven