From the President
| Jurisdiction | Georgia,United States |
| Citation | Vol. 14 No. 5 Pg. 0006 |
| Pages | 0006 |
| Publication year | 2009 |
by Jeffrey O. Bramlett
Less Than One Penny
The Constitution of the state of Georgia—the fundamental contract between the people of our state and their government that endures each political season and every individual elected official—states: "Protection to person and property is the paramount duty of government and shall be impartial and complete. No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws."[1]
“Our courts—like every other agency of state government— are now being asked to do more with even less funding.”
All three branches of state government play a critical role in ensuring compliance with this highest duty of government. Every constitutional officer takes an oath to uphold this Constitution. But make no mistake about it; when it comes to resolving the hard questions of what it means to render "impartial," "complete" and "equal" protection of the laws governing persons and property with justice and mercy, the rubber meets the road in the courts of Georgia.
Judging the Performance of Georgia's Judiciary
Georgia's courts serve the people of Georgia well. The population growth and economic dynamism Georgia has experienced over the past decade is due, in no small part, to public trust earned by a judiciary that faithfully and predictably upholds the rule of law. Georgia's judicial system has successfully avoided the pitfalls of partisan politics, unpredictable pendulum swings and unfortunate corruptions that have plagued the judiciaries of our sister states to the west.
Georgia's courts have improved qualitatively in many dimensions over the past generation. Two examples make the point.
When I was called to the private bar from a federal appellate court clerkship, it was an open secret that meaningful appellate review of capital sentences did not begin until a case progressed to the federal courts on writ of habeas corpus. Some federal judges were prone to express frustration about the fact that their death penalty workloads were heavy because elected state judiciaries left the unpopular task of rigorously scrutinizing the fairness of death penalty trials to the federal judges who enjoyed life tenure. Today, even the harshest critics would have to concede that Georgia's courts and juries approach the potential imposition of capital punishment with a gravity, skepticism and rigor that simply did not exist 30 years ago.
Back then, conventional wisdom had it that filing a civil rights enforcement action against the state of Georgia in the state courts of Georgia would constitute legal malpractice. Today, it is not unusual for the state of Georgia, as a civil defendant, to invoke federal court jurisdiction and remove civil rights actions to federal court.
Georgia's courts have earned an outstanding national reputation for productivity. The Supreme Court of Georgia was recently recognized by an independent University of Chicago study as the most productive state court of last resort in the United States. The Court of Appeals of Georgia handles one of the largest case loads of any court in the...
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