Litigation

Virginia Budget May Cut Up to 10 Percent of Judgeships

By Peter Hardin

A  two-year, $82 billion budget recently passed by Virginia’s General Assembly would  make a sizable hole in authorized judgeships statewide, eliminating, by one estimate, as many as 10 percent of some 400 state judgeships.

The belt-tightening comes at a time when Virginia Chief Justice Leroy R. Hassell has written legislators identifying a “strong need for new judgeships and staff on the trial courts.”  Justice Hassell wrote, “[We] will not seek such increases in 2010 because of the Commonwealth’s unfortunate economic situation.”

Legislators agreed to a  provision that “judges who die or retire won’t be replaced,” according to a Washington Post article. The language of the provision states that authorized judgeships would be reduced by the number of vacancies existing at the beginning of the period plus new vacancies that occur, to save more than $10.5 million.

This “freeze on filling judicial vacancies,” estimated an article in Virginia Lawyers Weekly,  “figures to diminish the state’s judicial firepower by more than 10 percent” in a state with more than 400 judges.

?The state?s broke and needs to save money,? maintained Del. Dave Albo, the Republican chairman of the House Courts of Justice Committee, according to Virginia Lawyers Weekly. Republican Del. Bill Janis said the courts could meet critical needs by drawing on retired and substitute judges and judges from adjoining jurisdictions.

But a Virginian-Pilot article said that if the budget measure passed, “The wheels of justice could be slowed in some of Virginia’s busiest courtrooms.” The Virginia State Bar Council voted 55-2 to ask the General Assembly to continue funding existing judgeships and drug courts, according to the bar group’s Web site.

“I think to not fill these vacancies would be a grave mistake,” Dr. William Hamilton Bryson, who teaches Virginia civil procedure at the University of Richmond law school, told Gavel Grab. “It seems to me this will result in the delay of justice.”

Nationwide, at least a handful of other states are considering similar steps through statutes or at the discretion of the state’s chief justice, according to officials at the National Center for State Courts, a partner of the Justice at Stake Campaign.

A recent National Law Journal article reported on court systems feeling the budget pinch in a number of states around the nation, including Virginia.

Full post as published by The Gavel on March 17, 2010 (boomark / email).