ONE HUNDRED YEARS SINCE POUND: HAS COURT REFORM MATTERED?

Roscoe Pound's address to the American Bar Association convention in 1906 launched modern court reform. On the one hundredth anniversary of his speech, three court administraturn leaders review the accomplishments of court reform and the growth of the court administration profession. They respond

* What has been the most consequential transformation of the courts over the past fifty years and has this transformation improved the effective administration of justice?

* Has the quality of judicial decisions improved over the past fifty years? How is the quality of decisionmaking related to the administration of the court system?

* Which one individual contributed the most to the improvement in the administration of the courts during the past fifty years? Who is today's Roscoe Pound or Chief Justice Vanderbiit for even Justice Tom Clark or Chief Justice Burger)? Why?

* What developments loom on the horizon as challenges or threats to the American court system?

* What advice would you give those considering a career in court administration?

Why do courts exist? The National Association for Court Management's (NACM) Core Competency Curriculum describes the accepted purposes of courts as

(1) individual justice in individual cases

(2) the appearance of individual justice in individual cases

(3) provision of a forum for the resolution of disputes

(4) protection of individuals against the arbitrary use of governmental power

(5) making of a record of legal status

(6) deterrence of criminal behavior

(7) rehabilitation of persons convicted of crime

(8) the separation of some convicted people from society

(National Association of Court Management, 2003:12.)

Since the founding of the government, no one has seriously challenged the purposes and responsibilities of the American court system; it is the ability and effectiveness of judges and court managers in delivering upon that promise that has been questioned. One hundred years ago, Roscoe Pound voiced questions about the abilities and effectiveness of the American court system in his famous address to the American Bar Association and called for efforts to reform court institutions, procedures, and practices (Pound, 1906). Since 1906, and especially during the past fifty years, court reform has been on the legal agenda of federal, state, and local governments; the legal profession; and civic organizations. Among other outcomes of modern court reform was the birth of the profession of court administration.

Now one hundred years after Pound, judges are joined by court managers in considering the questions Pound raised. These questions concern all those who work in the American judiciary. No matter what the job title or position of responsibility is within the judiciary, the American justice system is on the shoulders of all those who lead and manage it. As federal circuit judge Dorothy Nelson noted, "The fair and just administration of the judicial system depends upon the operation of every facet of that system" (Nelson, 1974:xxv).

So, it is asked: Has court reform mattered? Have the changes in the administration of the courts improved the delivery of justice? Is court administration a worthy profession?

INTERVIEWS

Three long-time court administration leaders, known for their academic and philosophical outlook on the court administration profession, as well as their contributions to the profession, were asked to comment on the achievements of court reform. These questions were formulated as part of the development of a Michigan State University certificate course in judicial administration, "Purposes and Responsibility of Courts." The questions were sent separately by mail to each respondent, and then the compiled responses were reviewed by all for further responses and accuracy.

For over twenty years, Alexander B. Aikman held senior research and management positions at the National Center for State Courts. Aikman publishes a newsletter, Thinking Out Loud, which regularly presents some of the newest and most challenging ideas in court administration. Geoff Gallas is founder and president of AEQUITAS, Inc., a court-consulting organization. Gallas conceived and directed the Trial Court Performance Standards and the subsequent National Association for Court Management Core Competency Curriculum Guidelines. Russell Wheeler is the president of the Governance Institute and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution. From 1991 to 2005, Wheeler had been the deputy director of the Federal Judicial Center, where he has served in one capacity or another since 1977.1

Terry Nafisi (TN): What has been the most consequential transformation of the courts over the past fifty years and has this transformation improved the effective administration of justice?

Aikman: Identifying the most consequential transformation is hard; there have been several very important ones, including but not only computerized case management systems, the growth of state-funded state courts, and the recent federalization of both criminal and general civil law. Fifty years takes us back to 1955, several years after the first professional court administrators had been appointed, but well before the explosion in the use of professional managers and the rise of the administrative bureaucracy in courts. Therefore, I would nominate the rise in the profession of court administration and the use of professional court managers-in contrast to judges and/or elected clerks-as the most consequential development. (This is truer in state courts than in federal courts, but it holds true in federal courts, to a degree, as well.)

A number of judges were critical to the rise and maturation of court administration, including Chief Justice Warren Burger, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, Justice Paul Reardon of Massachusetts, former Alabama Chief Justice and U.S. Senator Howell Heflin, and key chief justices and judges in a number of states. Without their vision and acute political skills, the framework and support for the growth of court administration would not have been put in place. Yet, there is a symbiotic relationship between the efforts of judicial officers and those of court administrators at both the state and local level. The judicial officers laid the foundation for the profession; the court administrators built the structure on that foundation. Without professional managers, most of the other changes of consequence for courts over the last fifty years would not have occurred at all or they would have taken much longer to be introduced and adopted other than by a few "change leaders" adopting them on their own and without the support or emulation of others.

Gallas: Discussion of the most consequential judicial administration transformation in the past fifty years needs to be increased to four transformations and these four transformations divided into two "groups" below: one very significant transformation with presumed impacts on trial court performance and the quality and consistency of case processing, and three transformations which had actual impacts.

The most important transformation in terms of presumed impact is the organization of court systems according to the unified-court concept, which includes many prescriptions including but not limited to:

* Simplified court structures lauded by Pound in the third section of his landmark 1906 ABA speech "The Causes of Popular Dissatisfaction with the Administration of Justice" and partially but not, as Pound pointed out in 1906, entirely implemented with the English Judicature Act of 1873;

* Centralization of administrative authority, funding, and personnel in supreme courts supported by central administrative offices;

* Unified one- or two-tiered trial courts;

* Judicial merit selection;

* Elimination of elected clerks; and

* Related, beginning in the late 1960s, the development and introduction of professional court managers.

Two presumed substantive results of a massive and continuing reorganization of court structure and jurisdiction along these lines were increased consistency of justice and better court performance across formerly independent and overly politicized trial courts. Implementation of unified court systems had an extremely positive impact: creation of a court system where none existed before except as regards the flow of cases from trial to appellate courts. However, achievement of improved and more equal justice is not proved.

Reformers also presumed that newly created court systems organized according to the unified-court concept would significantly improve court efficiency and lead to better use of judicial system resources throughout and across both court systems and their constituent trial courts. Truth be told and rhetoric and belief aside, the actual impacts of reforms along the lines of the unified-court concept in achieving efficiency-driven goals are likewise at best mixed.

In terms of actual impact, three transformations among many are obvious to me. The first transformation had nothing to do with the field of judicial administration. This is the incredible impact of technology hardware and software on all organizations, courts included. However, while some impacts of technology are present in all courts, actual improvements and unintended positive and negative impacts vary from court system to court system and trial court to trial court, even within the same unified court system.

The second transformation-the Trial Court Performance Standards (TCPS) and an accompanying measurement system-was conceptual. The TCPS and, to a far lesser degree, the accompanying measurement system, introduced a far-reaching and needed advance in how those interested in the quality of justice and its improvement think about, and the vocabulary they use to discuss and describe, court reform. The unit of analysis shifted from court systems as a whole and their structure and organization to trial courts as organizations and what the trial courts should aim to produce with available resources regardless of structure, jurisdiction, funding, method of judicial selection, etc.

A third development-problem-solving courts-is more recent and has transformed both the once-unquestioned belief in an adversarial due-process litigation model as the way to truth and justice and the very goals of criminal justice system, and increasingly the processing of other case types. Judges now decide cases and endorse case processing based on their understanding of addiction and the efficacy of various treatment modalities for differing clients rather than on the rights of the accused or proof beyond a reasonable doubt or the preponderance of evidence. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of trial courts regularly, but not uniformly, operate on the basis of treatment goals and the impact of court intervention on future litigant and defendant behavior, rather than on the strict requirements of due process or equal protection. This transformation has not gone unchallenged by legal traditionalists.

Wheeler: The two biggest changes that occur to me are the professionalization of the judiciary, principally in the states, through changes in selection systems, and the creation of administrative infrastructures for the courts, infrastructures managed, sometimes in tandem with judges, by vocationally educated court administrators.

Note that you asked "most consequential" and I said "biggest." That's because I am not aware of much empirical research that links either change to improvements in judicial decision making or to improvements in so-called customer service that courts provide to users. (That doesn't mean the research isn't there and it doesn't mean there haven't been improvements. I'm just not aware of solid quantitative documentation.)

I realize you asked for one ("the most consequential") transformation, and I gave you two changes and I am bound to add another related change, viz., the increased, or at least more visible, involvement of courts-certainly appellate courts-in social and political issues that would probably take an observer back to 1955. Ironically, although I think generally the selection of state judges has become less partisan and more focused on judicial qualifications, the realization that judges are involved in making social policy has led judge selectors to become more interested than they once were in ideology. In the federal system, policy views have joined patronage as selection criteria, and at least in some state supreme courts, the judicial elections are different animals than they were fifty years ago-more partisan, more interest-group participation, a lot more money.

Aikman: I would like to add the following thought to Geoff Gallas's comment about the value of unified court systems. An evaluation of the results achieved by unification of California's two tiers of courts into a single court of general jurisdiction documented a number of improvements in access to justice, many of which were not identified in the debate prior to the change. These improvements support Geoff's comment about better use of resources. There also were some "political" advantages to the branch and to the new trial courts. The substantial fiscal savings touted prior to the unification were not realized, although there may have been some deferral of judgeship needs. Geoff is correct that the "efficiency" goals have seen mixed results, but there are important non-fiscal, non-efficiency improvements that should be recognized.

Geoff did not mention in his response, but it should be noted, that the Trial Court Performance Standards were a direct result of his vision and his hard work over many years. He deserves special credit for this, because he is right that they changed the character of the debate about what courts do and should do and also are embedding themselves in administrators' thinking more each year.

Problem-solving courts are a very important development and could be transformational in terms of what society expects from its courts. Time will tell if the role of the courts changes long-term, but problem-solving courts certainly have the potential to lead to a huge transformation. The only hesitancy in including them today is that it probably is too early to know if they are one of the most consequential changes.

TN: Has the quality of judicial decisions improved over the past fifty years? How is the quality of decision making related to the administration of the court system?

Wheeler: As indicated above, I don't know. One can give many operational definitions to "quality of judicial decisions," and there may be research that tries to measure changes in quality using one or more of them, but I am not aware of it. One other aspect of the question: the definition of judicial decision has changed. Judges, much more than fifty years ago, decide cases and make a lot of case management decisions as well. As trial rates have declined, that's become a source of complaint from judges and academics. Others say that all the teaching on effective case management has finally produced results.

I believe we can say with confidence that some ugly aspects of judicial treatment of litigants are much less prevalent now than in 1955-i.e., the judicial treatment of criminal suspects, racial minorities, and others. Judges create scandals today, e.g., by comments in sexual assault cases ("she invited it") that wouldn't provoke much interest fifty years ago. That's obviously an improvement.

As to the relation of any improvement in judicial decisional quality to administration of the court system, we can certainly speculate, for example, that judicial education programs have improved decisions and perhaps management and ethics, and that automation has increased the efficiency of case and docket management.

Aikman: I too do not know. One could argue that quality should have improved because there has been a continuing movement away from elected judges and toward an appointment process that focuses more on desirable judicial qualities and less on political rewards and electability. The growth of judicial discipline commissions also has been a new and effective way to weed out judges who are not performing or who are performing poorly, so the judiciary is not limited to impeachment, defeat at the polls, or nothing. Yet, one also might argue that there have been some degradation in quality as appointing authorities (governors in the states and the president for the federal judiciary)-and to a much lesser degree, electors in states-have tried to "assure" a judge's perspective once she or he assumes the bench. They do so by seeking to appoint those with relatively set views at the relative extremes of the political spectrum rather than those known to be more flexible and moderate in their thinking. When one starts with little or no tolerance for an opposite perspective, one's analyses are likely to be less balanced, and thus of a lower quality, than when one is open to being convinced by a perspective different from one's predilections.

From my perspective, the quality of judicial decisions has no direct impact on judicial administration. It has two indirect impacts: funding authorities sometimes try to "punish" the institution through the budget for individual decisions with which they disagree (even if the quality of the decision and resulting opinion are high), and poor-quality decisions can lessen the public's respect for the institution. The former is wrong but seemingly endemic; the latter would be devastating. The public's respect and acceptance of the validity of the processes are essential to the continued viability of the institution.

Gallas: The simple and most honest answer is that nobody really knows for sure. But many, including, I must confess, me, believe that the quality of judicial decisions has improved and that these improvements are related to improved court management.

The question of the relationship between administration and the quality of judicial decisions and the decision-making process is critical. The question itself assumes that those who honestly desire to link their work in varying roles throughout the judicial administration enterprise pay attention to actual impacts. And, for these heroes, it is impossible to overstate the importance of understanding that the vast majority of disputes sent to the courts for resolution are not resolved via a decision by a judge in either problem-solving or traditional courts.

Aikman: Geoff's response reminds me that over the last fifty years there has been a sea change in the entire thinking about delay in the processing of cases and whether it can be overcome. Fifty years ago, almost all commentators believed that delay could not be reduced or, if it could be, that the only way to do so was to add judges, courtrooms, and supporting staff. Virtually no one believes that today because of extensive and consistent research results in both the federal and state courts showing that the application of several limited but powerful principles will reduce delay, and that delay can be reduced with no change in the quality of justice (as measured by settlements and verdicts) or even improved justice. We know that delay degrades the quality of evidence. To the extent that cases are processed more quickly today than they were fifty years ago, the quality of justice is likely to have improved.

TN: Which one individual contributed the most to the improvement in the administration of the courts during the past fifty years? Who is today's Roscoe Pound or Chief justice Vanderbiit (or even Justice Tom Clark or Chief Justice Burger)? Why?

Wheeler: I think it would be very risky to try to name the person who today is making the kind of contribution to improved judicial administration that we associate with names like Pound or Vanderbilt. The winners write history, and we don't know today whom history will regard as the winner. And keep in mind that it wasn't until 1937 that Pound's 1906 speech got the recognition it now enjoys as a turning-point analysis of courts.

Finally, today, we may be in a bit of a lull as to court administration in the broad sense. Maybe no one stands out today, or will be regarded fifty years from now as standing out today, on the same level as the names you mentioned.

If you let me broaden the question to the last fifty years, it in one way becomes a lot harder because of the plethora of names. But here's one approach to the question: Earl Warren, for giving courts more visibility through the legal revolution that the Supreme Court provoked while he was chief justice, and Warren Burger, for institutionalizing the administrative infrastructure to support a more visible and active judiciary.

Aikman: Ed McConnell. He was the first state-level professional administrator and set the bar very high for all his successors and peers in terms of what he was able to accomplish in New Jersey and how he was able to do it. His vision was extraordinary and his political skills keen. He then led the National Center for State Courts from a fragile idea with limited support to a mature institution that everyone saw as critical to the success of state court administration. He assured the Center would pursue research that courts needed and that it would be quality research. He pushed staff diversity to provide a model for state courts across the country. He also assured that the Center would support organizations essential to the maturation of the field. He created the model of what the Center should be and how it should operate. In the course of so doing, he also improved exchanges between the federal and state courts (although this was initiated by others), and supported joint research efforts with the federal courts. Both as a court administrator and as a builder of a core support organization for state courts, his influence was national and, to a degree, international. I can think of no one with the span of years McConnell had in the field who touched more critical institutions or people and who performed at such a high level across all those years than Ed.

I am not certain we have any Pounds, Vanderbilts, Clarks, or Burgers today. I am not current with all the national leaders today, however, so someone may be a worthy successor about whom I have not heard. Based on viewing from a considerable distance, Chief Judge Judith Kaye of New York and Chief Justice Ronald George and State Court Administrator William Vickrey of California may be worthy successors to these leaders.

But Russ is absolutely right about the need for space to assess the impact of leaders. History is a better judge of who is/was significant than are contemporaries.

Gallas: This question brings many people to mind, including several who are close personal friends and mentors. So for reasons of diplomacy and other considerations, I will decline mention of any one person.

Consider also that, with the possible exception of Pound (at least before he became the dean of the Harvard Law School), all the past heroes listed above were exceptional due to both their contributions to the theory and practice of judicial administration and their organizational position and the opportunities their position presented at a particular time and place. Like the many exceptional people that this question brought to mind for me, my reading about Pound and my own and other's direct knowledge about the three others suggest that all these heroes were, in some way and to some degree or other, flawed.

It is these flaws of humankind of even the most exceptional among us that require independent and impartial judiciaries throughout a "compound" republic. In the words of Madison in Federalist 51: "If men were angels no government would be necessary."

Aikman: Geoff references the importance of position and opportunity in surfacing the early leaders. Those conditions are needed by all leaders, regardless of the field. Very few of us can force our way onto a stage and take over by design. Equally important from my perspective is that the early leaders were passionate. They were passionate first about justice. Then they were passionate about creating institutions and individuals that would enhance courts' ability to achieve justice. When Russ talks about "a bit of a lull," I might phrase it more as fewer people with the passion of the early leaders and, maybe, people being overwhelmed by the details associated with the extraordinary changes courts currently are trying both to develop and to absorb.

TN: What developments loom on the horizon as challenges or threats to the American court system?

Wheeler: There is always a lot of talk about how disaster will strike if condition X or Y comes to pass, but often X or Y becomes today's status quo and then eventually the halcyon days of yesteryear whose loss we bemoan. For a federal example, in 1964, a special Judicial Conference committee said that "nine is the maximum number of active judges" for a court of appeals "without impairing the efficiency of its operation." By 1973, the Commission on Revision of the Federal Court Appellate System expressed the conventional wisdom that a court of appeals with fifteen judges creates "serious problems of administration." Nine, the outer limit in 1964, had become the good old days by 1973, and the day will probably come when fifteen reflects the same.

So I'm a little reluctant to say too much about ominous developments on the horizon. The standard answer to this question is usually lack of resources, but I'm not ready to say that funding problems, viewed in the long run, are likely to be qualitatively worse in the next ten years than they have in the last, especially if technology can continue to carry some share of the load.

One development outside the judicial realm that I think will increasingly affect it is the polarization in legislative politics. Certainly on the federal level, redistricting to create and then preserve safe seats has meant that incumbents play to their respective bases. The evidence of the last four years or so suggests that interest groups that pay much greater attention to courts than do most people are demanding what they regard as greater accountability from courts and what others might regard as overzealous legislative oversight. I don't know how much, if at all, this plays out at the state level.

Aikman: I see four challenges or threats. The first is "a lack of vision." I feel too many judges and probably too many administrators have lost "grand" visions of what courts and court administration might be and thus believe tinkering with the status quo is advancement. Over the past few years, administrative and judicial leaders also have focused on immediate budget problems and how to survive and have forgotten to look ahead and create a new vision. Second, budget restraints and, more critically, budget controls by legislative and executive branch budget people are a significant challenge to the flexibility and control court administrators need to be effective.

Third, increasingly, it seems, legislatures are passing laws that mandate actions or changes that have significant administrative consequences and/or that micromanage the institution, either because they do not trust the skills and vision of the branch's leaders or because they don't like a particular decision. The consequences on staff and budgets can be substantial and often are not even considered in the debates prior to passage. Finally, the politicizing of the bench and, more critically, of the appointment process, may end up undermining the historic and bedrock role of the courts as politically neutral arbiters of facts and analysts of the laws and regulations of the other branches. If the public feels the courts no longer are independent arbiters and that they can predict results based on one's political party affiliation or some other litmus test, the courts' historic role is doomed.

A corollary but separate thought is that legislators too often duck hard issues when drafting legislation, knowing and expecting judges to sort it out later, but then blame judges if they do not like the interpretation rather than accepting responsibility for poor drafting initially. By consciously throwing hard issues to the courts, they are setting up courts as quasi-legislative bodies forced to become "political," even if courts seek conscientiously to be neutral. By ducking their own responsibility, the legislatures are creating a political Catch-22 situation for courts.

I agree with Russ about the consequence of budget limitations. Courts to date have done a remarkable job of improving efficiency with limited funds. A significant portion of that improvement can be tied to advances in the use of technology, as Geoff suggests in his answer to the first question. Another major contributor has been improved management, including imaginative responses to funding limitations. I believe courts will continue to adjust and advance within whatever budget conditions arise.

Gallas: One need only watch cable and network news for two hours each night over any one week to learn how misunderstood the courts are. While the particular issues will change, national and state-based surveys over the past thirty years confirm that the public neither is satisfied with nor understands the courts. The pure genius of Pound's 1906 ABA address is that it teaches that the most effective judicial administration imaginable cannot, and should never be expected to, eliminate entirely public dissatisfaction with and misunderstanding of the judiciary.

However, public misunderstanding of the American judiciary could and should be mitigated by national judicial administration leaders and informed commentators. One remedy would be correction of the undue often exclusive focus on the federal judiciary in public media reports and, sadly, in the academy and academic journals as well.

My home state of Pennsylvania disposes of almost twice as many cases (4.5 million) as the entire federal judiciary (2.6 million cases) with, in round numbers, less than half the budget and half the judges and judicial officers. And considered in aggregate, federal cases are neither more important nor, in actual fact, more complicated than state cases. Just over 60 percent of the 4-6 million cases disposed in Pennsylvania are traffic, but of the 2.6 million federal cases, almost 90 percent are bankruptcy and magistrate-judge cases. So what?

The nation's collective ignorance of the American judiciary is due at least in part to a discernible lack of understanding of the actual importance and workings of the state judiciaries as opposed to the federal judiciary by the media and professors alike. Witness the recent appearance of a federal appellate judge with, as I understand it, no trial court experience at any level, on multiple news shows as an expert, if not the leading expert, on courthouse and judicial security following the murder of two family members of a federal judge in Chicago and, a week later, the murder of a state trial judge and his court reporter in Atlanta.

The development looming on the horizon is that the wildly off-base public, media, and academic understanding of the judiciary, due to the wildly off-base exaggerated importance given to federal as opposed to state courts, may continue unchecked far into the future.

Aikman: Geoff's point about the lack of civics training and the public's lack of understanding about what courts do and how they do it is critical. In a recent (August 2005) survey by HarrisInteractive for the American Bar Association on citizens' understanding of some basic civics issues involving courts, the lack of knowledge was sobering. Only one in five correctly answered the four questions about our government's structure and what courts do. Almost half (45 percent) could not name the three branches of government. Three percent said courts' responsibilities include raising taxes, and 4 percent said courts can wage war. In that environment, the type of issues Russ, Geoff, and I mention almost seem like spitting in the wind.

I am currently writing a book (Aikman, 2006) in which I make the same point as Geoff about the relative importance of state courts. It does not depreciate the importance of federal courts to argue that much more attention should be devoted to what state courts do and how they do it by academics and by the media. Extending Geoff's figures just a little, in 2003, the last year for which data are available for both federal and state courts, there were 138.5 nontraffic cases filed in state courts for every one filed in federal courts. Federal district court judges averaged 483 cases each in federal FY2003, while state judges in unified jurisdiction courts-the ones most comparable to federal district courts-were averaging 1,626 nontraffic cases each. And state courts handle family matters, juvenile matters, and probate matters that affect people's daily lives significantly while these case types are virtually nonexistent in federal courts. Federal courts do important work that deserves attention, but so do state courts.

Academics, in particular, have focused on federal courts, I believe, because trial court opinions as well as appellate decisions are reported, so research is relatively easy. Plus, after all these years, there doubtless is a "halo effect" around federal courts that has some appeal to young academics and the tenured faculty who review their work. Everyone would benefit from academics exploring more thoughtfully how to research state caseloads and results.

TN: What advice would you give to those considering a career in court administration?

Wheeler: Before going to that, let me say, especially if I'm supposed to be the federal person in this exchange, that I agree 100 percent with Geoff and Alex about the importance of the state courts and the need to devote more study to them. They're where the judicial rubber hits the road for the vast majority of people in this country. Now as to advice-advice I probably wouldn't give, but would have 20 years ago, namely, "you have the chance to get in on the ground floor of an emerging field." I think the building has been pretty well built by now, so it's a matter of determining if one wants to live in it.

One final point-Your questions have all assumed answers restricted to the U.S., which is fine. But judicial administration now has an international focus and is beyond the early days when everyone thought improvement in the rule-of-law abroad meant exporting U.S. practices and procedures and structures.

Now, people are asking whether an emphasis on an independent and effective judiciary is as important as once thought to economic development and even protection of human rights. That is healthy. At the same time, I don't think the international rule-of-law interest in courts is likely to go away, although it may be increasingly affected by the realization that solid judicial instructions don't emerge after two or three years of automation and judicial education.

In short, those interested in improving the administration of justice should broaden their focus beyond the U.S., both for the benefits of comparative analysis and because of the opportunities for service beyond U.S. borders.

Aikman: Court administration still is a noble undertaking. There is need to upgrade skills across the profession, but it is a worthy career that can generate lots of variety and lots of satisfaction for however long one wishes to pursue it. Yet, anyone entering the field must do so understanding that courts are not like private corporations or partnerships and, in some critical ways, also not like the other branches of government. So the skills needed and the scope of authority that court administrators have are based on very limited models. And a court administrator will not have the scope to act independently that most other managers, including in other government units, have. Good management in the public sector or the private sector normally will be good management in courts, but there are critical differences that have to be recognized and respected, even if not always accepted. It is a hard career while still offering many opportunities to improve the administration of justice and, consequently, the social fabric.

I would quibble a bit with Russ's suggestion that the rule of law abroad and international judicial administration might be a profitable new area for judicial administration. I do not quarrel with the idea that the U.S. can learn from judicial systems abroad. We should examine anything and everything that might advance our field. For those considering a career in judicial administration, however, I would not recommend the career because maybe someone could work in another country for a while. I believe there still are important challenges within the U.S., particularly as the emphasis in court administration shifts from lawyers and judges to users and access. Plus, as mentioned, problem-solving courts may change how we view courts' roles, which poses a whole new set of issues that will be both challenging and exciting.

Gallas: While salaries and benefits are decent and improving, court managers, even those working in the federal system, don't get rich. Please don't enter the profession without a passion for justice and the determination of the long-distance runner. Judicial administration truly is not the sport for the short-winded.

A WORTHY PROFESSION

Court reformers since 1906, taking to heart Pound's assessment that the administration of justice is archaic, have undertaken institutional and procedural reforms and created a corps of professional administrators to assist judges in management. Now, for future court managers, paraphrasing Wheeler, the building is built; one must decide if one wants to live in it.

The effort to improve both the effectiveness and the efficiency of the administration of justice, however, is far from over. In 1971 President Nixon "opened the first National Conference on the Judiciary by calling for 'genuine reform' of the Nation's courts-'the kind of reform that requires imagination and daring'" (Department of Justice, 1973:171). Imagination and daring will be required to advance the goals of court reform from bricks and mortar to the effectiveness of the administration of justice. This next stage in the effort to improve the effectiveness of the American court system calls for a strong generation of court leaders. NACM's statement of the accepted purposes and responsibilities of courts will provide an effective standard by which to measure court reform efforts and to guide judges and court managers in meeting new challenges. Judge Nelson's caution, voiced in 1974 in the midst of the era of modern court reform, is just as valid today: "there is a crisis in Judicial Administration in this country which must be identified clearly and head-on if we are to approach the goal of dispensing justice to all in this nation" (Nelson, 1974:xxvi). Will court reform have mattered if judges and court managers shrink from meeting this challenge?

FURTHER BIOGRAPHICAL TEXT

Alex Aikman also served as the court executive officer of the Superior Court of El Dorado County, California, and is the author or coauthor of eight books and numerous articles on court administration.

Geoff Gallas was the dean of the Court Executive Development Program of the Institute for Court Management for sixteen years; he is a former faculty member of the University of Southern California. He is also a former executive administrator of the First Judicial District in Pennsylvania and a former vice president of Research and Technical Services for the National Center for State Courts. Gallas also served as editor-in-chief of the Justice System Journal (1977-80).

Russell Wheeler first joined the courts in 1973 as a judicial fellow in the Office of the Administrative Assistant to the Chief Justice, United States Supreme Court. He is a former staff member of the National Center for State Courts. He has served in a senior staff capacity on virtually every major study of the federal courts over the past twenty-five years, including the long-range planning research conducted 1993-95. Wheeler also served as editor-in-chief of the Justice System Journal (1981-82).