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Thursday, September 18, 2008

Courts -- "Law & Mortar: An examination of a courthouse building boom"

This is a series by the Lexington Herald-Leader. Thanks to the Kentucky Law Blog for the link.

The first story, by Linda Blackford, was last Sunday, with the preface:

In 1998, the Kentucky State Supreme Court's new chief justice, Joseph E. Lambert, embarked on an ambitious program to build or improve courthouses in all 120 counties in the state. But a decade and $880 million later, has the courtroom boom been worth the cost?
There are nearly a dozen stories in the series. From Tuesday, a story by Greg Kocher begins:
While Kentucky has chosen to build 65 new judicial centers at a cost of more than $800 million, Texas has distributed about $270 million in matching grants for the renovation of 60 courthouses.

The Texas Historic Courthouse Renovation Program has restored about 50 county courthouses in the past nine years, said Stan Graves, who directs that effort for the Texas Historical Commission. It is the largest preservation grant program ever initiated by a state government.

"We have in no case allowed under our program the demolition of a historic courthouse to put a new judicial center in that spot," he said. "To me, a demolished building has a lot less significance than one that's had to be altered to accommodate some security concerns."

Texas has 254 counties.— more than twice the 120 in Kentucky — and roughly 235 Texas courthouses are considered historically significant. Of those, about 150 were built before 1920, and about 80 were built before 1900.

Contrast the Kentucky building boom with the federal courtroom situation. Tony Mauro of Legal Times reported yesterday in a story that began:
Federal trial judges may start doubling up to reduce the need for courtroom space at a time when budgets are tight and fewer cases go to trial. The Judicial Conference, the policy-making body of the federal judiciary, took baby steps in that direction at its fall closed-door meeting at the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

The conference agreed that in future court construction, every two senior judges will have to share a single courtroom. Similar court-sharing will be considered for magistrate and bankruptcy judges, as well as nonsenior trial judges in larger courthouses. The policy for senior judges may have limited impact, since little new courthouse construction is planned in the near future.

Anthony Scirica, chief judge of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said at a press conference following the meeting that the move toward shared courtrooms was part of the judiciary's ongoing cost containment efforts and a response to congressional pressure to find ways to "use courtrooms effectively."

Scirica, who chairs the conference's executive committee, also acknowledged that the number of trials is dropping, with many cases settling or being diverted to private arbitration. In an article in the law review Green Bag last year, Judge D. Brock Hornby of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine wrote that the number of civil trials in federal court has declined 60 percent since the mid-1980s, transforming the job of judges. But Scirica said it is still "important to have a judge available and a courtroom available" to keep cases moving and for trials to take place when needed.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 18, 2008 01:15 PM
Posted to Courts in general