U.S. Court System at Breaking Point, Study Panel Finds

The nation’s 200-year-old federal court system is at “a crisis point,” according to a special committee of lawyers, judges, congressmen and U.S. senators, who have been examining the system for more than a year, a federal judge said here Monday.

As a result, U.S. District Judge Judith N. Keep of San Diego and her colleagues on the Federal Court Study Committee feel that sweeping changes in how the federal judiciary operates are necessary.

The group, created in 1988 by an act of Congress and appointed by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, is to present its recommendations to Congress in April. The panel, which issued a 138-page draft report in late December, is holding nine public hearings on the document around the country, including Monday’s session at the U.S. Courthouse here.

The basic thrust of the report is that the federal court system should be kept small and that the courts cannot solve all the nation’s problems--including illegal drugs and Social Security payment reductions.

The report asserts that the federal courts’ caseload has been growing dramatically without a corresponding increase in judges to handle the work.

For example, Keep--who presided at Monday’s hearing--said that, since 1945, the number of federal appeals filed by litigants has increased fifteen-fold, while the number of federal appeals court judges has only tripled. The report states that there is an urgent need for more judges at that level.

Among 100 proposals in the report, the committee recommends:

- Creation of a special federal tax court of appeals.

- A judicial impact study of all new legislation.

- Shifting a number of cases now in federal courts to state courts.

- Delegating an administrative court, outside the federal judicial system, to handle such cases as determining whether an individual’s Social Security benefits can be cut off.

- Permitting the Justice Department to file only a limited number of drug-related cases in federal court--namely those that cannot effectively be prosecuted at the state level because, for example, they involve interstate or international narcotics traffickers.

There is sharp debate on virtually all of these proposals. For example, a number of critics have asserted that taking the Social Security cases out of the federal court system will make it more difficult for the less-fortunate to vindicate their rights.

USC law professor Judith Resnik focused on the debate over Social Security cases Monday when she said the committee report, as a whole, could be read as an attempt to keep poor people out of the federal courts and reserve the system for big-business disputes.

Keep emphatically denied that the committee had any such intention.

The drug proposal also has attracted considerable interest.

A number of federal judges have said they are being swamped with drug-related cases, making it more difficult for them to find time to try civil cases.

However, in a sharp dissent, Assistant U.S. Atty. Gen. Edward S. G. Dennis, who is in charge of the criminal division in Washington, wrote in the report: “Limiting federal participation in the war on drugs ignores the reality of present-day law enforcement.”

One of the most significant--and controversial--proposals is one urging curtailment of lawsuits involving state law that are filed in federal court. Currently, such suits are filed when the parties in a case reside or are based in different states.

Keep said those cases make up 25% of the load currently considered by federal judges and could include a routine “fender-bender” involving a driver who lives in California and another who lives in Nevada.

The proposal is already under fire from trial lawyers and state court officials, among others.

Lawyers have long maintained that so-called “diversity jurisdiction” is vital because federal judges, who are appointed for life, are less subject to political pressures in cases involving local litigants.

That assertion was dismissed by the committee with little discussion in the report.

State court officials also oppose the proposal, complaining that they, too, are overburdened.

Judith McConnell, presiding judge of the San Diego County Superior Court system, said such a change would add 800 cases a year to her courts’ docket. And she emphasized that there are not enough courtrooms to go around.

“We currently have a judge trying a case in the marshal’s exercise room in El Cajon,” she said, in an attempt to illustrate her point.

One committee recommendation--amending changes in federal sentencing laws that were enacted in recent years--drew broad support from a diverse group of witnesses.

“The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 has created havoc,” said Raul Ramirez, who recently stepped down as a federal judge in Sacramento.

He said the new guidelines have not achieved the act’s goal of providing uniform sentences for the same offense.

U.S. District Judge William W. Schwarzer of San Francisco advocated the abolition of minimum mandatory sentences, saying they produced “gross disparities in sentencing because, in some cases, the quantity of drugs involved is all that determines the sentence.”