CHANGING COURTS IN CHANGING TIMES - THE NEED FOR A FRESH LOOK AT HOW COURTS ARE RUN

In this lecture from the Mathew O. Tobriner Lecture Series at Hastings College of the Law, Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye urges a broader concep tion of court administration. She presents three concrete solutions to today's court administration problem. One is in the area of criminal justice, the second the family courts, and the third the jury system-t hree areas of court operations that touch large numbers of citizens. S he describes these solutions with the hope that the legal and academic communities, as well as the public, will start to evaluate the effici ency of court administration, because the public deserves and demands courts that are both just and effective. While the subject areas of th ese three solutions may be disparate, the underlying approach is the s ame: paying attention not just to the fairness of the rules and proced ures but also to the effectiveness of the outcomes. This involves exam ining operations from the perspective of the providers and from the pe rspective of the consumers of court services. Most importantly, it inv olves simply asking: is there a different, better way to do this?