"American State Appellate Court Technology Diffusion," Journal of Appellate Practice and Process...

Roger A. Hanson, "American State Appellate Court Technology Diffusion," Journal of Appellate Practice and Process 1 (Fall 2005): 259-83.

Key technologies used by state appellate courts are examined by Hanson in the context of how such innovations have diffused among those courts, with discussion

as well of "future trends." Technologies receiving particular attention are electronic docketing and filing, telephone and videoconferencing, and Web-based services. Hanson, twice this Journal's editor-in-chief, points out how automated docketing "continued to dominate the technological agenda in the 1980s and early 1990s" (p. 263), although telephone conferencing was another technology that received considerable early attention. Of particular interest is the discussion of state intermediate appellate courts' coming to use technology, because of their high case volume, before state high courts, which often lagged in adopting technology.

Hanson marks 1994 as the beginning of the contemporary period in court use of technology; his marker is the inclusion at that time of standards relating to technology in the ABA Standards Relating to Appellate Courts. For the 1994-2005 period, he devotes particular attention to electronic filing (e-filing), using as exemplars the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division Two, and North Carolina's Supreme Court and Court of Appeals; videoconferencing; and appellate courts' Web-site offerings, which include "the use of the Internet to communicate resources, information, and news to appellate court consumers" (p. 275). (For a portrayal of one court's use of Web sites, see the Osborn article in this issue of the Journal.)

For the future, Hanson stresses "the heightened importance of technology management" (p. 280); greater use of technology by state supreme courts; and modifications of automated docketing to allow better analysis of court performance.