Roberts lauds district judges as justice’s workhorses
WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John Roberts, noting that the number of cases on the Supreme Court’s docket has declined, used his year-end report on the state of the federal judiciary to praise federal trial judges, whose workload is by many measures much larger.
In the term that ended in June, the Supreme Court issued 62 decisions in argued cases, down from 66 in the previous term. That amounts to about eight majority opinions per justice, even accounting for the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February, and is a steep drop from the more than 150 decisions the court issued per year in the early 1980s.
“While the Supreme Court is often the focus of public attention,” the chief justice wrote in the report, released Saturday, “our system of jus- tice depends fundamentally on the skill, hard work and dedication of those outside the limelight.”
He said the job of a trial judge was in some ways harder than his own. For starters, “the t ypical federal judge has more than 500 cases on the docket,” an amount that he called “a daunting workload.” A trial judge’s work, he added, presents many vexing challenges.
“District judges are the first to encounter novel issues, and they must resolve them without the aid of guiding precedent,” Roberts wrote. “Because they work alone, district judges do not have the benefit of collegial decision-making or the comfort of shared consensus. And because of the press of their dockets, they face far more severe time and resource constraints than their appellate brethren.”
Congress has authorized 673 district judgeships, along with four territorial ones.
In the fiscal year that ended in September, there were about 369,000 new district court filings. A single Supreme Court decision, in Welch v. United States, accounted for a 55 percent increase in lawsuits against the United States, Roberts wrote, as that decision allowed some prisoners convicted under the Armed Career Criminal Act to chal- lenge their sentences.
Other statistics reflected a strengthening economy, with bankruptcy filings dropping to their lowest level since 2007.
Most cases in the district courts end in plea bargains, settlements or pretrial dismissals. But the few that go to trial, Roberts wrote, present special challenges to district court judges.
“As the singular authority on the bench, he must respond to every detail of an unscripted proceeding, tempering firm and decisive judgment with objectivity, insight and compassion,” Roberts wrote. “This is no job for impulsive, timid or inattentive souls.”
As he did in last year ’s report, Roberts welcomed recent revisions to the rules governing civil litigation in the federal courts.
“Litigation is costly,” he wrote in the new report, “and everyone benefits if disputes can be resolved efficiently with minimal expense and delay.”