Judiciary Voices Frustration . . . Politely

In the politest of terms, the federal Judiciary is hollering for help. Judicial help. Fill vacancies. Create new judgeships.

In the last month, the chair of the Judicial Conference Committee on Judicial Resources and the judges of the Central and Southern Districts of California have asked when they can expect their calls for help to be answered.

The Southern District of California ranks as the busiest court in the nation in terms of total cases filed, trials, felony cases filed, and total weighted caseload per judgeship. The Judicial Conference has recommended the addition of eight judgeships to handle this high caseload—but Congress has yet to authorize any new judgeships for the court. The court has attempted to stem the tide by relying on its senior and visiting judges. But that reliance has been ill-fated. As Chief Judge Marilyn Huff wrote to the Conference Executive Committee last month, “. . . our situation is worse because two of our senior judges passed away last year, one of our senior judges has elected to go on inactive status effective January 1, 2001, and one of our active judges is out on an extended medical leave. We need help.”

Matters aren’t much better in the Central District of California. In a letter last month to Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the court’s 22 active judges requested that the bipartisan commission appointed to evaluate applicants for federal judgeships in California move to fill five long-standing district judge vacancies on the court. They also requested that the President send the nominees to the Senate and the Senate fill the vacancies this year. Two of the positions have remained unfilled since July 1998. Former Chief Judge Terry Hatter pointed to the 18,000 new cases filed in the district last fiscal year, nearly a 37 percent increase over 1998. “During calendar year 2001, thus far on average,” he wrote with his fellow judges, “each of the 22 active judges in this district has been assigned 35 new civil cases every month and at least one new criminal case each week. No matter how hard and efficiently we work, we cannot resolve that many cases; the backlog keeps growing.”

Judge Dennis G. Jacobs (2nd Cir.) is the chair of the Judicial Conference Committee on Judicial Resources. On behalf of the Conference, Jacobs and Administrative Office Director Leonidas Ralph Mecham wrote to congressional leaders urging Congress to act on the judgeship recommendations made by the Conference and transmitted to Congress in July 2000. “As you know,” Jacobs wrote to Senate Judiciary Committee chair Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), “the draft bill has not been introduced, and no action has been taken on the proposal. Your assumption of the chairmanship of the Committee on the Judiciary encourages me to re-raise this with you and again respect-fully ask that you actively consider the urgent need for additional Article III judgeships.” Jacob’s committee assesses the need for additional judgeships on a biannual basis. “Our committee and our Subcommittee on Judicial Statistics carefully consider a wide spectrum of factors in evaluating the requests of Circuit Judicial Councils for additional judgeships,” Jacobs wrote. “The protocol we follow is thorough and effective, and our recommendations err if at all on the side of restraint.”

The Judicial Conference has sent its judgeship recommendations to Congress with a request for 54 judgeships, 27 of which would be temporary. The recommendations include two temporary judgeships for the Central District of California and five permanent and three temporary judgeships for the Southern District of California. No comprehensive judgeship bill has been passed by Congress since 1990, and the recommendations transmitted by the Conference in 2000 have not been introduced as a bill in either house. Bills to create judgeships along the southwest border, H.R. 272 and S. 147, were introduced in the House and Senate and would give the Southern District of California the Conference’s recommended number of new judgeships. No action has been taken on either bill, although Senator Feinstein attempted, and failed, to attach a provision requesting additional judgeships to the Judiciary’s fiscal year 2002 appropriation. As of October 1, no nominations had been made to fill any of the five vacancies in the Central District of California.