State leaders need to OK judicial reforms
by admin on 01/03/10 at 7:31 am
The Martinsburg Journal
By Richie Heath, Executive Director, WV Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse
March 1, 2010
While West Virginia’s leaders have spent a lot of time talking about reforming our state courts, we seem to keep spinning our wheels in the mud. Case in point is our most recent judicial reform discussion.
In April 2009, Gov. Joe Manchin announced that he was creating an Independent Commission on Judicial Reform to study West Virginia’s much-criticized court system and recommend possible fixes. In establishing his commission, Gov. Manchin noted the lack of fundamental change to our courts since 1974.
Many hailed the commission as a positive first step for the state. Public hearings followed, and the result was a series of reform recommendations – the most significant of which included the creation of an intermediate court of appeals and corresponding automatic right of appeal for all litigants.
In its recommendations, the governor’s commission notes that our Supreme Court of Appeals, one of the busiest appellate courts in the nation, “maintains a completely discretionary docket, with no appeal as of right.”
If this process sounds familiar, it’s probably because our state did the same thing more than a decade ago. In 1997, the West Virginia Supreme Court similarly appointed its own Commission on the Future of the West Virginia Judicial System, which noted that there had not been a thorough review of West Virginia’s courts since 1974.
The commission ultimately found that “West Virginia’s court system must change to meet the demands of our changing society and to better serve the citizens of this great state.”
Citing an appellate process “threatened by a continuously increasing caseload” and one of the busiest appellate dockets in the nation, the Supreme Court’s own commission recommended, among other things, the creation of an intermediate court of appeals along with one appeal-of-right for all litigants.
Thus, two separate commissions, one created by the governor and one created by the court, have come to similar findings – the caseload of the West Virginia Supreme Court warrants the creation of an intermediate appeals court with corresponding right of appeal. This is why Gov. Manchin’s recent State of the State address and subsequent comments from Chief Justice Robin Davis are baffling.
