View from the wheelhouse: the role of court administration in the management, independence, and accountability of the courts.

• Author: Henley, Steve
• Position: Florida

Floridians, like most Americans, have high expectations of their courts. These expectations are deeply rooted, reflecting the strong value Americans place on fairness, equal treatment, and open government. While Florida's courts have historically been held in high regard, they have become increasingly challenged to meet these expectations in the face of growth and limited resources. The pending implementation of Revision 7, the constitutional amendment requiring the state to pick up a greater share of funding for the courts, presents an entirely new challenge: Can Florida's trial courts continue to meet citizen expectations, or even improve their performance, subsequent to its implementation? The outcome will rest in part on the transformation of court administration and its ability to manage court resources to meet the needs of litigants.

The Revision 7 implementation bill passed by the Florida Legislature in 2003, HB-113A, enumerates 14 elements of the court system to be funded by the state. (1) While each of these elements is critical to the operations of the trial courts, one that is vital to the functioning and coordination of each of the others is perhaps the least understood and least visible: court administration. To understand the role of court administration--i.e., the management apparatus of the court under the direction of the chief justice and circuit chief judges--in Florida today, it is necessary to look back at changes in state court systems throughout the 20th century, specifically at the unification of the Florida court system almost 25 years ago, and at the emergence of modern administration of public institutions. This article presents an overview of the evolution of contemporary state court systems, focusing on the role of professional court managers. Attention is especially directed to the role court administration plays in providing accountability for the management of court operations while protecting the integrity of the core judicial process of adjudication. Finally, an overview of Florida's trial court performance and accountability initiative is provided, including the development of a system to allow court administration to manage resources at the state and local level in the post-Revision 7 era.

There should be no misunderstanding: There is some rough sailing ahead for Florida trial courts and Florida's legal community must brace itself. In navigating through this rough patch, court administration is not the captain of the ship, a responsibility borne by the chief judge, but is perhaps an amalgam of navigator, helmsmen, and first mate, charting the course, guiding the vessel, directing the crew in the performance of its duties. How rough the passage ahead will be, and how long it will take, is difficult to say; but one thing is certain: Court administrators will have the best view.

In brief, it can be said that the need for effective coordination and management is driven by the sheer volume of cases that come into modern courts, compelling the rationing of limited resources to meet expanding needs. In performing this function, the role of court administration is critical to the ability of the system to manage itself. Further, court administration provides accountability mechanisms in a manner that buffers the adjudicative process, insulating judicial decisionmaking and supporting judicial independence.

Quantitative growth leads to qualitative transformations. While the necessity for judicial administration cannot be attributed solely to increases in workload, growth is clearly a very insignificant factor. The story of Florida is a story of growth. Throughout the last century, towns grew into cities and cities merged into metropolitan areas. With this growth came increases in court case filings. Figure 1 represents the growth in case filings in Florida from 1978 to 2001. It is instructive to note that, given the local nature of courts, there was no mechanism for counting cases state wide prior to 1978.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

To meet the demands of volume, court systems, like other institutions, began to rely on professional administrators. Like schools, banks, police departments, and hospitals--all once relatively small, localized, and perhaps idiosyncratic to the point of quaintness--courts are now larger and more centralized, requiring full-time managers. Administrators of courts, in other institutions, today rely on emerging management techniques and adhere to nationally accepted professional and organizational standards. The county courthouse, like the bank on the corner, is no longer a strictly local enterprise.

Fifty Years of Reform

The emergence of modern court systems has occurred to large extent unnoticed by the public. The most significant change in the last 50 years has been the transformation of more or less autonomous local courts into organizationally coherent state court systems. Prior to the 1950s, trial courts were an integral part of local government and local politics. Fragmentation existed as local, stand-alone courts functioned as self-contained entities rather than as parts of a coherent system. In Florida before the Article V reorganization of 1972, police courts, municipal courts, family courts, probate courts, justices of the peace, and others operated within their own spheres. Local courts, created under the authority of municipalities and counties, presided over not always discrete sets of cases, loosely bound only by a more or less common appellate process. Each judge ran his or her own court with a high level of autonomy, largely isolated from other judges and courts, and each developed distinct procedural and operational characteristics. These courts were generally self-funded...