Changing Courts in Changing Times: The Need for a Fresh Look at How Courts are Run

In this lecture from the Mathew 0. Tobriner Lecture Series at Hastings College of the Law, Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye urges a broader conception of court administration. She presents \u27three concrete solutions to today\u27s court administration problem. One is in the area of criminal justice, the second the family courts, and the third the jury system-three areas of court operations that touch large numbers of citizens. She describes these solutions with the hope that the legal and academic communities, as well as the public, will start to evaluate the efficiency of court administration, because the public deserves and demands courts that are both just and effective. While the subject areas of these three solutions may be disparate, the underlying approach is the same: paying attention not just to the fairness of the rules and procedures but also to the effectiveness of the outcomes. This involves examining operations from the perspective of the providers and from the perspective of the consumers of court services. Most importantly, it involves simply asking: is there a different, better way to do this