Judge and staff shortages are leaving Americans in limbo
“CHILDREN are suffering,” says Toni Belford Damiano, president-elect of the Passaic County Bar Association. Judge shortages in New Jersey have caused trial delays, adding to a pandemic-related backlog. Families going through a divorce are struggling with uncertainty as they have to wait longer for custody hearings. In cases of domestic abuse, safety is a concern. “I’ve been doing this almost 40 years,” says Ms Damiano, a family-law practitioner. “Fairness requires timeliness.”
But a lack of judges—and, in many other states, a shortage of other staff needed to keep courts going—are clogging up the system. Tim McGoughran, head of New Jersey’s bar association, says that, pre-pandemic, most divorce cases going to trial did so within a year. Now some are entering their third or fourth year. For the past three years, the court system has operated with an average of more than 60 judicial vacancies. Stuart Rabner, the state’s chief justice, has said the number should be no higher than 25 or 30 for the judiciary to best serve the public. Of 463 positions on the trial-court bench in the state, 55 are vacant.
And by the end of the year another 11 judges are due to retire. In February Justice Rabner suspended civil and matrimonial trials in six counties. On July 5th he suspended trials in a seventh, Passaic County, except for very limited circumstances, from July 31st.
2023-07-13 07:58:54
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