Analysis Of The Volume Of Cases In The Court System (Essay Sample)

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Introduction
Court administrators face many issues in relation to courts. On focus here is the issue of volume of cases in the court system. Case volumes have been named as one of the crises that largely face courts with backlogs being attributed to various issues and having vile consequences in the administration of justice process in America (Aaron, 2013). Volume of cases and backlog are tantamount and thus they will be covered here equivalently.
Causes of increased volume of cases in the court system
The court system in America has had its share of problem with regard to the requirements of representation by a defender for accused persons. The requirement was first established by the Supreme Court in the case of Gideon v. Wainwright. In this case, the court appreciated the need for a defendant to be represented by a lawyer if they cannot afford one. This has caused a lot of problems as the court cannot proceed where a defendant claims that they cannot afford a lawyer. The effect is that the court is forced to allocate and most come from the public arena. However, due to the number of cases and crimes committed, it is difficult for all to be represented. Moreover, there is a requirement that the American Council of Chief Defenders instructs defenders that they cannot hold more than four hundred misdemeanours and more than one hundred and fifty felonies in a year. Currently, this limit is not only overstepped but there are myriad of accused persons who still do not have legal representation. This leads to the backlog of cases as failure to get representation has been challenged many times leading to cases being halted.
The other challenge is the issue of criminalization of any ‘trivial’ matter. An example is in Texas where Oyster harvesting processes may lead to one being accused of eleven felonies. Federally, in 2008 there were over forty-five thousand crimes that had criminal penalties and this is notwithstanding the other penal consequences on violations of other regulations. The latter offences range between ten thousand and three hundred thousand. This has not only led to many unnecessary cases that would have been resolved in other ways but also wastage of public resources.
The crisis of volume, especially in the appellate courts, has also been brought by the dramatic increase in the number of appeals (Thomas& Denis, 1994). As Gizzi notes, there has been increased the number of appeals in the last 30 years that has led many to state that there is a backlog crisis and it has hit the court of appeal countrywide (1993). However, generally, there has been increased filing of cases in the nation i.e. civil, criminal and traffic offences. These have been ranging in millions. For criminal cases, their numbers have also been attributed to stringent laws on certain activities such as drug trafficking, usage etc.
Poor financing has also been mentioned as another factor. There is poor funding of the judicial arm of the government as per a research was done by the ABA. This is even on payment of the judges who at one time in 2011 were requesting an increase in their benefits (Grossi et al, 2012).
The efforts that court administrators have made to address or solve the issue.
The court administrators such as CJ Burger have called on for the establishment of intermediate courts to share the backlog of the appellate courts and the Supreme Court. There has also been a call for the number of judges to be increased due to a gap in manpower that exists today. However, congress has failed to take such measures and this was especially during the recession period. In addition to this, there have been provisions for the positions of judges that go empty for various reasons to be filled faster. Other actions have been on transferring of judges of judges from areas where they are underutilised to where they are over-utilised. This process has been successful in places such as New York in terms of backlog reduction.
Many jurisdictions have had attempts emanating from the judiciary doing away with processes which cause the delay as noted by Levin. Prosecutors have also resulted into plea bargaining as they are caught out between delay and pressure of society baying for the conviction of the offender. Using technology is also an action taken for example electronic records maintenance of the courts to red...