From "not the usual ABA (American Bar Association)" the courts normally hear from, it is good to know that the Bankers are thinking about the criminal justice system. The American Bankers Association share via press release on November 10 2021 their new whitepaper.
Everyone can easily foresee the surge of in-person court cases that are coming later in 2021. Many courts have put case processing on hold. And assuming that the vaccination program will be successful in the first half of the year, what can courts do to address the case backlog and new matters that will come? I have some ideas that I will share below.
Please also note that my colleagues and friends of the
NCSC have created a tremendous resource around courts and the pandemic at https://www.ncsc.org/newsroom/public-health-emergency
Click on the Statewide Plans to Resume
Court Operations link (you may have to scroll across the red navigation bar to
find it).
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| Mural in the Ariel Rios Federal Building |
We can clearly foresee that the upcoming years will be difficult for governments and courts as tax revenue will take some time to recover following the Pandemic. Court budgets being primarily composed of personnel costs will respond by not filling empty positions, layoffs, and reducing service hours and/or days.
I have an idea that could be considered to ameliorate service
reductions that were introduced in recent years, famously by ride-sharing
companies such as Uber and Lyft, known as “dynamic” or “surge” pricing. I explain below.
“A Google search can reveal negative information about anyone or any company. Since it's difficult to change those results, many small businesses are paying thousands to so-called reputation management companies to make negative web pages disappear.”They further explained:
“One of the only ways to get Google to permanently remove a link from its search results is with a court order from a judge. CBS News sorted through thousands of these court orders and spotted small businesses from all across America trying to clean up their reputations. But we also spotted a problem: Dozens of the court documents were fakes.”If you get a chance to watch the video it shows that the fraudsters simply cut and pasted images of the court stamps and judges signatures. Thus here is yet another example of how the authentication method of signatures and blue rubber stamps is outdated.
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| Photo: Andreas Praefcke [CC BY 3.0 ] |
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| US District Court - Great Falls, Montana |
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| An original McDonald's Restaurant |
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| https://goo.gl/PLWoi1 |
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| US Federal Courthouse Las Cruces NM |
“the paywall that surrounds Pacer is facing what may be its most serious test since the service emerged 28 years ago. Judge Ellen Huvelle of the US district court in Washington DC is expected to decide in the coming days whether a lawsuit accusing the government of setting Pacer fees at unlawfully high rates can proceed.
The case, which is seeking class-action certification, is being led by three nonprofits: the National Veterans Legal Service Program, the National Consumer Law Center, and the Alliance for Justice. Each group says it has downloaded documents from Pacer and incurred charges alleged to exceed the cost of providing the records. All say the setup violates the E-Government Act of 2002, which authorizes the judiciary to “prescribe reasonable fees”—and which the plaintiffs argue should limit the government to charge users “only to the extent necessary” to make the information available.”The full article is worth reading because it provides some explanation of fee waivers and, the total amount of revenue generated that supports court automation that is not provided by Congress in budget appropriation. We would also point out that there are additional issues such as costs relating to data privacy, redaction, and management that are not addressed in the article.
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| Chief Justice of Rwanda, Prof. Sam Rugege |
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| A "hi-tech" court counter |
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| See Riverside eFax article below. |
