Views from the Bench Magistrate Judges in Utah: Efficient Administration of Justice
| Publication year | 2023 |
| Pages | 12 |
September, 2023
By The Honorable Jared C. Bennett
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Judge Bennett gratefully acknowledges the assistance of law clerk Luisa Gough in preparing this article.
When you participate in a case filed in Utah's Federal District Court, interacting with a Magistrate Judge is almost inevitable. For starters, Magistrate Judges are on the assignment wheel along with the District Judges for all new cases. This means that your case could be directly assigned to a Magistrate Judge, and both parties can consent to that Magistrate Judge being the judge presiding over the case. But even when a case is directly assigned to a District Judge to begin with, the District Judge will nearly always refer all non-dispositive matters in the case to the Magistrate Judge for resolution. And even if your case has been proceeding for quite a while before the District Judge, he/she will make you aware that a Magistrate Judge can try your case more quickly than his/her felony-laden trial calendar by advising you of the Magistrate Judge's availability and asking whether you are willing to consent to the Magistrate Judge taking over the disposition of the case. A Magistrate Judge is often the first judge criminal defendants and civil litigants encounter in their proceedings. Peter G. McCabe, A Brief History of the Federal Magistrate Judges Program, Fed. Law., May/June 2014, at 44, 51. For this reason, the United States Supreme Court observed: "Given the bloated dockets that district courts have now come to expect as ordinary, the role of the magistrate in today's federal judicial system is nothing less than indispensable." Peretz v. United States, 501 U.S. 923, 928 (1991) (internal citation omitted).
Given the ubiquitous nature of Magistrate Judges in federal cases in Utah, attorneys can greatly advance the effectiveness of their advocacy by understanding the Magistrate Judge's role in the process and how to best utilize this cadre of judges to achieve the speedy, just, and inexpensive resolution of their litigation. In writing this article, I seek to better inform the Utah Bar on the Magistrate Judge referral process in Utah with the hope of encouraging counsel to rely on the six Magistrate Judges who diligently serve in the District's northern and southern regions to do justice.[1]
The Role of Magistrate Judges in the District of Utah
I frequently receive emails to my chambers stating: "I was unsure who would be ruling on this Motion, the Magistrate Judge or the District Judge, so I have prepared two proposed orders." This uncertainty is unsurprising given that, by design, Magistrate Judges' responsibilities vary across the nation. When Congress passed the Federal Magistrates Act of 1968, creating the Magistrate Judge system, district courts were granted wide latitude to allocate duties to Magistrate Judges based on the court's needs and conditions. See 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(4); Philip M. Pro, United States Magistrate Judges: Present But Unaccounted For, 16 Nev. Law J. 783, 789 (2016).
To make the most efficient use of its "latitude" as to Magistrate Judge duties, the District of Utah adopted and continually maintains a Magistrate Judge Utilization Plan. Magistrate Judge Utilization Plan, District of Utah (on file with author) (MJUP). The plan outlines the responsibilities of Magistrate Judges within the District of Utah and implements best practices based on the authority granted Magistrate Judges through statutes and rules. According to the Administrative Office of the Courts, our District of Utah's Magistrate Judge Utilization Plan is a "model" for the rest of the nation, but these are the views of federal bureaucrats, after all. Despite the understandable skepticism regarding the views of some beltway bureaucrats, numbers don't lie. In 2022, Utah's Magistrate Judges were the fifth most productive in all matters of the ninety-four federal judicial districts. Magistrate Judge Disposal Rates by District (on...
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