Miscellaneous

Chief Justice Ternus gave her State of the Judiciary Speech to the state legislature today. The full text and a summary of her speech are available here. She proposed changes to the Juvenile Court system and announced additions to the State’s drug court system. Both noble causes, in my opinion.

She also announced that the Supreme Court has chosen to scale back the idea of full public access to court records. The original thought, with the initiation of online filing in the state court system, was that all documents would be readily available to the public. Now, people have to go to the Clerk’s office to look through a file. Justice Ternus now says that the Supreme Court has decided that such a level of availability will have a chilling effect on the use of the courts because people don’t want they’re court documents out for everyone to see. Instead, full access to documents will be available on public kiosks at the Clerks’ offices and to select users (attorneys, litigants, etc.).

If there is already full access to Court records at the Clerks’ offices, why add additional computer systems to the mix? That doesn’t make sense to me.

Also, new Court of Appeals opinions today. You can find them here.