Building a Better Understanding of Trial Courts

Abstract

Every day, new social, economic, political, and technological change enters the courthouse door through litigation and awaits correct and timely decisions by judges at critical stages of the legal process. Courts themselves are complex organizations that require management to meet the variable expectations of individuals and business entities who avail themselves of the legal process. Managing this complex environment, often characterized as decentralized, autonomous, and fragmented, requires insight and direction into how to achieve organizational effectiveness. However, due to a set of internal constraints courts often find it difficult to assess how well they are doing. Courts as institutions have little to no internal research or analytic capacity to enlighten judges and administrators on how to organize collectively to get the job done. State court administrative offices and trial courts usually lack research and evaluation divisions with professional research staffs, which are defined as a cadre of professionals with master’s degrees or higher who address policy questions using data.1 This stands in stark contrast to state executive-branch agencies that have legislative budget and agency analysts. Within the current structure, virtually all acting court managers at the trial court level spend a bulk of their time setting calendars, managing employees, planning and executing court budgets, dealing with facilities issues, and introducing technology for recordkeeping purposes, without ever really assessing how well the court as an institution is doing. Furthermore, courts are challenged to report even the most basic information about their case processing, such as filings and dispositions, and infrastructure, such as the number of full-time equivalent staff, in a reliable and consistent manner. Without this information, courts are hard-pressed to gauge which policies, practices, and initiatives work; how to allocate scarce resources efficiently and effectively; and how to convey information about the court to judges and staff who work in the court, external stakeholders, and the public. Cohen, March, and Olsen (1972) characterize the policymaking process as a situation where solutions are looking for problems. Courts, on the other hand, are institutions where challenges, questions, and problems are seeking solutions. This provides a unique need for political scientists and other social scientists who can provide both theoretic and practical contributions. Social-science research can begin to systematically and comparatively assess issues of court reform and court performance.