2023 Year-end Report on the Federal Judiciary

• Citation: Vol. 37 No. 1
• Publication year: 2024
• Author: Written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.

2023 YEAR-END REPORT ON THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY

Written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.

Sometimes, the arrival of new technology can dramatically change work and life for the better. Just one century ago, for example, fewer than half of American homes had electricity. During the New Deal, the federal government set out to "bring the light" to homes across rural America. Representatives recruited farmers to join electricity co-operatives for $5 each. Then came teams of men to clear the brush, sink the poles, and wire homes to the still inert grid.

As Robert Caro relates in The Path to Power, in some places the project took so long that many forgot about it, or were certain they had been duped. But eventually there were stories like Evelyn Smith's to be told:

"[O]ne evening in November, 1939, the Smiths were returning from Johnson City, where they had been attending a declamation contest, and as they neared their farmhouse, something was different. 'Oh my God,' Evelyn's mother said. 'The house is on fire!' But as they got closer, they saw the light wasn't fire. 'No, Mama,' Evelyn said. 'The lights are on.'" (Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power 528 (1982); see id. at 52-53, 516-529.)

But not every story of technological investment ends brightly, as Mark Twain discovered financing the "Paige Compositor." A typesetting device, the elaborate Compositor consisted of 18,000 parts and came with a patent application longer than The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Twain was entranced by the invention, committing most of his fortune to bringing it to market. Unfortunately for Twain, the Compositor was too complex to commercialize. Twain's company went bankrupt. (R. K. Rasmussen, A Critical Companion to Mark Twain: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work 827-828 (2007).) And according to at least one account, both the attorney who drafted the patent application and one of the officials who examined it ended up dying in an insane asylum. (An Incident in Mark Twain's Life, 70 The Typographical J. 625, 626 (May 1927).)

Thirty-five years ago, the Federal Judiciary began to take tentative steps into the modern era of information technology: In 1989, the branch finally supplied personal computers to secretaries in all judges' chambers and ensured that there was at least one personal computer to be shared by each judge's law clerks. New tools to make court information available to the public were rolling out, too. That same year, courts launched the Voice Case Information System (VCIS) with pilot tests in four bankruptcy courts. As it was explained to judges: "By using a touch-tone telephone, members of the public can connect to the court's computer voice synthesis device which reads back case information to the caller from the court's database." (A successor to VCIS still exists, by the way: If you would like to travel back in technological time — and get current case information by phone — you can call 1-866-222-8029.)

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Those of us who marveled at new, bulky, early personal computer systems in legal workplaces could hardly have anticipated today's ubiquitous conversations about whether and when computers might replace all sorts of professions — not least, lawyers. Every year, I use the Year-End Report to speak to a major issue relevant to the whole federal court...