Federal Judge Takes Issue With Limiting Court Expansion

Federal Appellate Judge Stephen Reinhardt said Sunday that if pending efforts to freeze the growth of the nation’s federal courts are successful, it could deprive millions of people of access to justice.

“Clearly the end result of a freeze would be to limit drastically Congress’ ability to expand individual rights,” Reinhardt said in a speech accepting Loyola University Law School’s St. Thomas More medallion.

Several judges, spearheaded by federal Appellate Judges Richard Posner of Illinois and Jon Newman of Connecticut, have advocated limiting the federal judiciary to 1,000 judges. They contend that the quality of the federal bench will decline if it is expanded beyond that. They also assert that federal courts are increasingly being forced to handle cases that were not intended for the federal system--such as routine narcotics cases.

Reinhardt took issue with both assertions. Although he acknowledged that he has concerns about the increase of federal drug cases, he said it is unrealistic to think that Congress “is going to pass any law that looks like a step backward in its war on crime.”

What is at stake, he said, is something much more dramatic.

“If those favoring a freeze on the number of judges prevail, the end result will be a drastic limitation on the number of cases that can be litigated in the federal courts,” Reinhardt said during an address in which he also attacked Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia.

“The behind-the-scenes agenda of many of the advocates of a freeze is to roll back” an era of progressive social change, “to return us to a time before the Congress enacted so many of the laws that serve to protect society’s interests today--environmental, civil rights and social welfare legislation,” Reinhardt said at the luncheon in Beverly Hills. “If people are deprived of the opportunity to seek remedies for the violation of those statutes in the federal courts, their rights will be of little value.”

The effort to freeze the number of judges, whatever its proponents’ intentions, “serves the philosophical objectives of Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Scalia,” who have “for years sought to limit access to the federal courts,” Reinhardt said.

In particular, he criticized Scalia for having an elitist view of the nation’s federal courts as forums that “exist primarily . . . to resolve cases involving large business interests,” rather than cases involving the human problems of ordinary people.

Scalia “believes that the courts should be reserved for ‘important cases’ and disdains those involving mundane matters, such as claims of unemployment discrimination on the basis of race or gender, unfair denials of desperately needed benefits in disability cases, and arbitrary governmental actions in deportation cases even when the issue, ultimately, may be one of life or death,” Reinhardt said.

Sunday marked the third time in the past year that Reinhardt, 62, a 1980 appointee of President Jimmy Carter, has attacked the Supreme Court--a highly unusual move for a federal judge.

Last April, at Yale Law School, he accused the high court of denying Robert Alton Harris his constitutional rights before Harris was executed, saying the Supreme Court placed a higher premium on legal procedures than on a man’s life.

The next month, Reinhardt charged that the Supreme Court had demonstrated in several opinions that “it no longer cares about the needs and concerns of minorities.” In a commencement address at Golden Gate Law School in San Francisco, he said those decisions sowed disrespect for the law.

Although Reinhardt, a former president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, is hardly the only liberal judge on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers nine western states, he is far and away the most outspoken. He has stated that part of a judge’s role is “to inform and educate the public” and to advance a clear view of the American legal system.

In presenting him an award named after More, an English lawyer and humanist beheaded in 1535 for refusing to accept King Henry VIII as leader of the Church of England, Loyola officials applauded Reinhardt’s strong views on the Constitution.

“Judge Reinhardt has long been a staunch defender of individual rights and civil liberties,” said Gerald T. McLaughlin, the law school dean.

So far, Reinhardt said the battle over the size of the federal courts has been waged largely behind closed doors. He attempted to broaden debate on the subject last October when he released a letter he sent to Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, urging that the number of federal appeals court judges--now 170--be doubled.

Reinhardt said he expects public debate on the issue to broaden when a report on the size of the federal judiciary is released by the Federal Judicial Center, a research arm of the federal court system.

Chief Justice Rehnquist has generally opposed expanding the federal judiciary, even though he has acknowledged that the federal courts are having an increasingly difficult time handling their caseloads.

In his 1991 year-end statement on the federal judiciary, Rehnquist said: “Unless actions are taken to reverse current trends or slow them down considerably, the federal courts of the future will be dramatically changed.” Judges will not be able to spend much time on cases or feel the same “sense of personal responsibility and accountability for the work they produce.”

The chief justice said in last year’s annual report that the number of new cases in federal trial courts rose more than 10% to nearly 280,000. Federal appeals courts saw 46,000 new cases filed last year, also a 10% rise. The number of new filings at the Supreme Court rose 7%.

On Sunday, Reinhardt expressed dismay that a proposed freeze “has gained considerable support in the federal judiciary.” He acknowledged that some liberal and moderate judges, “who are comfortable with the way courts have always operated and fear change,” are among those supporting a limitation on growth.

Reinhardt volunteered that more judges would cost more but said that doubling the size of the federal courts would be “a drop in the bucket” for the federal treasury.

And he scoffed at the argument that increasing the size of the federal bench will diminish its jewel-like quality: “We are simply deluding ourselves if we think that we are the brightest and the best. There are three, four, 10 or more lawyers out there at least as well qualified as each judge who is appointed.”

He urged the professors, students and others in the audience, including three of his 9th Circuit colleagues--Arthur Alarcon, William Norris and Harry Pregerson--and former California Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, to speak out against limitations on an expanded federal judiciary.

“The problem of the future of our nation’s federal courts is far too important to be left to judges,” Reinhardt said.