Reading about the National Conference.

• Position: FOREWORD

This issue of The Journal is devoted entirely to the 2005 National Conference on Appellate Justice. Although they don't add up to a play-by-play report on each of the Conference sessions, the papers gathered here will leave you impressed by both the breadth of the Conference's agenda and the care with which each of the participants considered the topics discussed.

All of the Conference papers are important, but Arthur Hellman's Conference Report is especially significant. By summarizing and commenting on the discussions in the small-group sessions, Professor Hellman reveals the character of today's appellate courts: What are appellate judges thinking? Appellate lawyers? Court observers? And what are the judges worried about, what concerns the lawyers who practice before them, and what is the public to make of it all? If it doesn't provide a complete answer to any of these questions (as the Conference itself did not), the Report gives us a snapshot of this moment, capturing the state of appellate justice as the country's courts enter the twenty-first century. And it prompts us to reflect on where we were a generation ago, when a sudden growth in appellate caseloads sparked fears of an increase in filings that would soon outstrip the system's ability to respond.

I don't know about each of you, but I was a student in 1975, one untroubled by--indeed, unaware of--the crisis of volume that had captured the attention of the appellate world. But the best minds on the appellate bench, in the appellate bar, and among the appellate scholars were indeed troubled, and they set themselves the task of addressing the impending disaster at the country's first national conference on appellate justice. The thoughtful papers associated with that initial conference fill five volumes, and it's not easy to set any of them down once you begin flipping through it.

Reading about the 1975 conference is both a comfort and a challenge. Some of what then looked like handwriting on the wall--the signs and portents that so concerned our predecessors--turned out to be a false alarm. But some of those worries were warranted, and we see in the Hellman Report indisputable evidence that the struggle to provide access to the appellate courts, and to provide justice to those who appear before them, continues today. For this reason alone, the Report would make a critical contribution to the continuing debate about the future of the appellate courts. But of course it is made more...