CHIEF JUSTICE
MARGARET H. MARSHALL LAUDS PROGRESS IN
IMPROVED COURT MANAGEMENT IN KEYNOTE ADDRESS AT
MASSACHUSETTS BAR ASSOCIATION ANNUAL MEETING;
CALLS EQUAL ACCESS TO JUSTICE A PRIORITY
Boston— Citing
“momentous changes taking place in the judiciary,” Supreme
Judicial Court Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall today said
the Massachusetts court system is making substantial progress
in efforts to improve court management and stated that equal
access to justice must be a priority as a “core principle
of our constitutional democracy.” Chief Justice Marshall
made these remarks in her keynote address to lawyers, judges,
and other members of the Massachusetts Bar Association at
their annual meeting held at the Sheraton Boston Hotel.
Chief Justice Marshall outlined three broad
management goals that are being implemented by Chief Justice
for Administration and Management Robert A. Mulligan and the
departmental Chief Justices of the Trial Court. They are:
1) a court staffing model to enable a fair, rational, equitable,
and transparent allocation of resources; 2) time standard
systems to set goals and promote the timely, expeditious processing
of criminal and civil cases; and 3) performance evaluation
systems to measure and assist in the improvement in the delivery
of services.
Chief Justice Marshall called the 2003
Report of the Visiting Committee on Management in the Courts,
headed by J. Donald Monan, S.J., Chancellor of Boston College,
“a masterful blueprint for comprehensive court management
reform,”and said the Justices of the Supreme Judicial Court
have embraced the Report’s major recommendations after having
traveled throughout the state to seek the views of judges,
clerks, court employees, the bar, the business community,
and many others. Chief Justice Marshall said “the vision
of the Monan Committee [will be] a reality in every court”
with the support of the judges and court employees and the
leaders of the other branches of government.
Establishing clear lines of authority within
the court system is another key management reform that is
being implemented “to ensure that we meet the needs of the
people who come to our courts seeking justice,” Chief Justice
Marshall said. “We intend to erase all ambiguity about who
is responsible for what,” she said.
Chief Justice Marshall said the fiscal
challenges of the past two years have “sparked a dynamic exchange
of ideas among the three branches of government on the issue
of court reform and she thanked the Governor and Legislature
for their involvement. She said that fiscal austerity “has
taught us to work smarter with less” and “to be more assertive
about the importance of courts to the health of our democracy.”
Calling equal access to justice another
priority, Chief Justice Marshall defined it as “making the
judicial system work for everybody.” She said the courts
have made important strides in improving access to justice
by reorganizing the Office of Court Interpreter Services,
which handles 70,000 annual requests for court interperter
services in more than 70 languages. She also cited the work
of the Steering Committee on Self-Represented Litigants, which
is exploring ways to deal with the increasing number of people
who represent themselves in courts and examining ways that
courthouses can be made more easily accessible to all.
But Chief Justice Marshall also described
unmet legal needs of low-income persons and explained how
access to justice is not equal in many situations. She called
“substantive justice, judicial administration, and access
to our courts” the “three pillars of justice,” which must
be strong for the system of justice to be effective.
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