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.