Hope for the Courts : Legislature could achieve long-sought unification

For some time, efforts to reorganize California’s trial court system have been afoot. Now, after failed efforts last year and partial steps taken by the California Judicial Council this year, the state Legislature may achieve a plan for full unification.

Until last November, California’s Constitution specified a three-tier trial court structure. Civil litigants file in justice court (in isolated rural areas), municipal court or superior court. Depending on the severity of the charges, criminal cases are filed in municipal or superior court; misdemeanors are heard in municipal court and felonies in superior. This structure has grown unwieldy, duplicative, inefficient and fiscally wasteful. Superior courts, particularly in urban areas, are overwhelmed with cases while justice courts and many municipal courts are underused.

The problems were worsened by the “three strikes and you’re out” law, enacted last year. More criminal defendants now request a jury trial rather than engage in plea bargaining. The bulge of “three-strikes” trials has forced some superior courts, including courts in Los Angeles, to temporarily stop hearing civil trials.

Last year, a constitutional amendment to merge municipal courts into superior courts failed in the Legislature. In November, voter passage of Proposition 191 helped some. That measure eliminated the outdated justice court system and folded its resources into municipal courts. Since then, the Judicial Council, the administrative arm of the courts, has begun to consolidate court staffs. This is good but not the same as unification, which would create one superior court, incorporating all municipal court judges.

A revised unification proposal now moving through the Legislature could help the courts realize the efficiencies and cost savings of unification while addressing the opposition of some judges to the elevation of all municipal court judges to the superior court. SB 162, now in the Assembly, would permit gradual unification at the discretion of each county. Municipal court seats, on becoming vacant, could be re-designated as superior court seats and then be filled with a new judge. This plan makes sense and seems politically doable.