Deadlines are difficult. If you've ever dealt with one, you know they create a pressure to produce that runs counter to the desire for intensive, thorough work.
The Montana Supreme Court is no doubt familiar with this pressure. Its seven justices make decisions that directly affect people's lives - sometimes many people's lives - so they want to make sure their ruling is meticulously complete. At the same time, they know that court cases that drag on for years can impose a hardship on those awaiting the court's final opinion.
Clearly, the Montana Supreme Court could use some help.
It's already taken a number of steps to speed up its pace, including hiring more law clerks. It may pick up a few more tips next month during a visit from the National Center for State Courts, which will likely include a discussion about adopting some sort of performance-measure system.
We hope the court does learn some new ways of shaving time off their decisions. But we also hope it doesn't make any changes that could potentially sacrifice thorough rulings for speedy ones.
It's a valid concern given that other states have recently adopted performance measures focused primarily on how many backlogged cases they have. New Jersey, for one, significantly increased its rate of decisions after establishing such measures in 1999. According to the National Center for State Courts, the number of backlog cases in New Jersey dropped by 46 percent over the following three years.
We're not so sure we want our court regarding its number of backlogged cases as its primary performance measure. We would rather see Montana's Supreme Court take all the time it needs to decide important cases - cases that sometimes set new precedents for lower courts. We don't want Supreme Court justices writing truncated opinions, or flipping decisions just to get people out the door faster.
Most other states have addressed their backlog of supreme court cases by creating an intermediate court. Some, such as Alaska, have established partial intermediate courts to handle only appeals in civil cases. The arrangement takes some of the pressure of the state supreme court will preserving its ability to accept appeal in both civil and criminal cases at its discretion.
While a case that has to go before an intermediate court and a supreme court would probably take some time, we doubt it would take any longer than the waits they're experiencing under our current system.
The Montana Supreme Court is the last stop for all cases under state jurisdiction. The last thing we want is for the people involved in those cases to feel they've been rushed through an expedited, incomplete process.
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