"Send in a judge to lighten the load" is the headline to this editorial today in the Indianapolis Star. The Star's position: "Congress needs to add a federal judgeship in Indiana to make the workload more manageable." Some additional quotes:
According to Laura Briggs, the court's clerk, Indiana's Southern District ranks fourth out of the nation's 94 districts in the weighted caseload each judge is assigned. The district's five full-time judges juggle an average caseload of 695 cases -- more than double the load in many districts.Posted by Marcia Oddi at September 29, 2004 09:38 AMAlthough the district ranks first in the nation in the per-capita number of bankruptcy filings, its bankruptcy courts also are being hit with reductions in staff.
"My expression has been that we're working on tiptoes," says U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker of the steadily increasing workload on judges and their staffs here. "You can do that for a while, but eventually you lose your balance."
She added, "This is a real crisis. And this is not simply some department of government with funding problems. This is the third branch of government, and the lack of funds is threatening its ability to deliver on its constitutional function."
Barker makes a convincing case. Congress should add another judge to the Southern District and stop cutting the size of the staff.