When Senior Judge Gladys Kessler joined the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 1994, prison inmates filing habeas corpus complaints often had to wait months to fly to Washington in groups for a hearing. Because the inmates were scattered in prisons across the country, the economic cost of flying them individually was too great.
But thanks to modern technology, these hearings can now be held by video, said Kessler, speaking on a panel with three other senior and retired Washington judges on Wednesday afternoon. The four judges talked about changes in the federal and local courts before an audience of about 40, including other local judges.
Senior Judge Cheryl Long of the D.C. Superior Court acknowledged that the local D.C. courts have had a more difficult time keeping up with technology than the federal courts. She said this was partly because of the local courts’ larger caseload.
She pointed in particular to the Superior Court's increased caseload from pro se domestic dispute complaints, ranging from divorce cases to child custody disputes between people under the age of 20.
"Most of the custody disputes are between people not married to each other. The world has changed," Long said, adding that pro se complaints used to be dominated by landlord-tenant issues and small claims cases.
Judge Stanley Harris, now retired from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, agreed with Long that the courts were making progress at managing their large caseloads, but said they still fall short in providing enough legal resources to weed out frivolous complaints and ensure proper complaints reach the courts. He described his favorite pro se complaint.
"The complaint was all of seven words. It said, 'The whole f***ing world is against me,' " he said.
Long said the breadth of information on the Internet has made it easier to summon diverse jury pools. She said the technology also helps people who speak other languages because translating software is found online, as opposed to the old process of hiring translators.
"We need technology for all the 'exotic' languages, or anything that isn't Spanish," Long joked.
Senior Judge Frank Nebeker of the D.C. Court of Appeals said that, ironically, technology has increased the amount of paper at the courthouse because now people expect everything to be provided for them in hard copy when they arrive at the court.
"There is no such thing as a paperless court," he said.
The panel, moderated by D.C. Bar President-Elect Ronald Flagg, a partner at Sidley Austin, was hosted by the D.C. Bar.
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