In Federal Courts, the Civil Cases Pile Up

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More than 330,000 civil cases were pending as of last October—a record—up nearly 20% since 2004, according to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. The number of cases awaiting resolution for three years or more exceeded 30,000 for the fifth time in the past decade. The federal court for California’s Eastern District has a particularly deep backlog. The number of cases filed per judge, 974 last year, is almost twice the national average. More than 14% of civil cases in that district have been pending for three years or more.

The Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to a jury trial in civil cases. But the Sixth Amendment gives people in criminal cases the right to a “speedy” trial. The upshot: Criminal cases often displace and delay civil disputes, creating a backlog.

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Behind the backlog is a combination of population shifts, politics and a surge in the number of federal prisoners. California’s Eastern District has the same number of full-time judgeships, six, as it did in 1980, when its population was about half what it is now.

But only Congress can create new judge positions or move them from slower-growing regions to faster-growing ones, and efforts to do so have run into political resistance. The nomination and Senate approval of federal judges, meanwhile, has become so politicized that some vacancies go unfilled for a year or more. Meantime, the federal prisoner population has ballooned by 55% since 1999, which has led to more lawsuits and petitions by prisoners seeking to undo their convictions or challenge prison conditions.

The Judicial Conference of the United States, the policy-making body of the federal judiciary, asked Congress last month to create 68 new judgeships for the U.S. trial courts, including six in California’s Eastern District, which hears cases from a swath of the state that includes Sacramento, Fresno and Bakersfield. In the past, Congress has approved new judgeships but deferred at least some of the posts until the next president takes office.

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Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the issue came down to responsible use of taxpayer money. At a cost of $1 million a year per judgeship for life terms, he said, “adding judgeships in busier courts without simultaneously reducing the number in courts where they aren’t needed is irresponsible.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-federal-courts-civil-cases-pile-up-1428343746