Feature
Gary Gwilliam, past president,
Consumer Attorneys of California
Roger K. Warren, president
emeritus, National Center for State Courts; I’m a plaintiffs’ lawyer, and our clients want to get scholar-in-residence, Judicial Council of to trial. There was a time in the 1980s when that California took five years or more. The insurance companies wouldn’t pay off, and people were really frustrated that they could not get their day in court. We don’t hear about that anymore. Sometimes people feel they’re forced to go to trial before they’ve completed discovery, though for the most part the courts are sympathetic to the lawyers’ needs. The quality of justice also has improved. Before state funding you couldn’t be sure what you were getting into if you had a case in some small counties. You can still get a judge who isn’t up to speed. But for the most part that situation has greatly improved, too.
What the California judiciary deserves to be proud of is not just that it achieved state trial court funding but that it seized the opportunity created by state funding in a bold way, one unparalleled across the country. The California judicial branch had the vision and leadership to address fundamental challenges that face any court in the 21st century: fair and impartial courts, judicial independence, sentencing reform, foster care, domestic violence, court interpreters for non-English-speaking litigants, jury reform, services and facilities for self-represented litigants. In all of those areas California was able to accomplish much more by approaching the problems statewide rather than one court at a time.
Gary Gwilliam
Roger K. Warren
Claire Cooper is a Bay Area freelance writer and was formerly legal affairs writer for the Sacramento Bee for more than 28 years.
Winter 2009
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