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Article Excerpt
State-court judges are no strangers to community outreach. (1) Because most come from and remain an integral part of the communities in which they sit, state-court judges have long played an active role in interacting with those whom they serve. During the last decade, however, state courts have redefined their role in reaching out to communities and, almost without exception, have significantly expanded their outreach efforts.
The increased attention to community outreach programs parallels, and no doubt largely resulted from, attacks on judicial independence that developed during the last ten years. For better or worse, we have a "long and distinguished" tradition of "[b]ashing judges" in the United States. (2) Our history is filled with attacks that have threatened both decisional and institutional judicial independence. (3) The most recent sequence of attacks seems to have begun with a series of events that occurred in the mid-1990s. In 1996, three incidents arguably signified the beginning of a new era of judicial criticism. First, congressional leaders and the president harshly criticized U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer for granting a suppression motion in a politically charged drug case, eventually urging his resignation and threatening impeachment. (4) Shortly thereafter, Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Penny White was defeated in a retention election that centered around her concurrence in an opinion that remanded a death penalty case for resentencing. (5) And on June 4, 1996, U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge H. Lee Sarokin retired because he found himself contemplating whether and how opinions he was preparing would be used politically in light of persistent political criticism aimed at his work on the bench. (6)
These and similar incidents, followed by broad, general criticisms of judges and the judicial system, triggered a torrent of responses from the academy, the bar, and the bench. Several law reviews held symposia on judicial independence in the late 1990s, and on July 4, 1997, the ABA Commission on the Separation of Powers and Judicial Independence, formed in part as a response to these attacks, released its final report, which provided a historical overview of judicial independence and outlined several recommendations designed to ensure its preservation. (7)
State-court judges quickly put aside their frustration at being the target of attacks many perceived as unfounded and unfair and began developing initiatives designed to bolster judicial independence, foster a better public understanding of the judiciary, and identify areas in which the courts need to improve. The courts received direction and assistance from organizations such as the National Center for State Courts, the American Judicature Society, Justice at Stake, the American Bar Association, the Committee for Economic Development, and the Denver Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System.
In order to identify and discuss contemporary trends in court-community outreach programs, however briefly, in this paper, I contacted the chief justice of each state and asked the justice to describe the two or three community outreach programs that have proved most effective in that state. (8) The diversity of programs developed in the various states, some of which are described below, reflects the unique challenges facing each state and the considerable disparity of resources available for outreach programs. Despite those differences, the programs share many similarities. Perhaps most striking is the degree to which the programs reflect a new approach to community outreach; these programs are not just more of the same. Instead, state courts have fundamentally changed their approach to developing outreach efforts. The information I received reveals several clear trends in the efforts undertaken by state-court systems.
Most of the programs the chief justices identified as successful began after 2000, although some of these programs built upon prior experience. That fact, I think, emphasizes that the courts recognized the serious nature of the attacks on the justice system and took seriously the need to respond effectively. Another major change between these new programs and prior programs involves the degree to which the new programs resulted from central planning efforts, which usually included public input and encouraged a responsive and interactive discussion between courts and the public. The programs also often...
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