Public Notice Detail

Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz
Minnesota State Bar Association Convention, Duluth
July 1, 1999

Thank you for that introduction.  I'd also like to thank Mark Gehan, who in the last year has been both a leader for the bar and a great friend of the bench.  As some of you may know, he was very helpful with the judiciary’s efforts at the Legislature last session.  Please join me in thanking Mark.

In my first full year as Chief Justice, I have had several opportunities to travel the country and learn about other court systems.  While I consider myself to be open-minded, I usually return home with a sense of gratefulness.  Gratefulness for what our branch of government has accomplished in Minnesota and gratefulness for our energy and commitment to tackle the challenges ahead.

So I must begin by saying that our successes so far and goals for the future would not be possible without the Minnesota State Bar Association working together with the courts to build one of the finest justice systems in this country.  The judiciary in this state has the privilege of working in concert with you as a group, and with you as individuals.  I thank you for your leadership, for your extensive contributions and for your willingness to work with us on issues of mutual interest.

This really is an important time for all of us whose work revolves around the justice system.  For one, we are about to begin a new century and millennium.  And on August 13th in Stillwater, we will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the state’s courts.  In honor of the first convening of the Minnesota state courts in 1849, we will take a boat ride down the St. Croix, watch a dramatic court re-enactment produced by the American History Theatre and enjoy a reception in the Historic Courthouse.  I look forward to seeing many of you at our sesquicentennial celebration next month.

In preparation for this event, I have been reading Minnesota State Bar Association’s book, “For The Record,” about the history of law in the state and I was fascinated by a quotation that was cited in one of the margins.  Edward Sullivan, an Englishman who was observing one of Minnesota’s very first trials, described the courtroom like this:

“The Judge was sitting with his feet on the stove… [with] a chew as big as an orange in his mouth, and a glass of liquor by his side.  The jury was in nearly the same elegant position… The prisoner was sitting drinking and smoking, with his back to the judge, and looking the most respectable and least concerned of the party.  Although it struck me that there might be a good deal of justice, there was very little dignity in the application of the law in Minnesota.”  This account gives a whole mew meaning to the phrase "Justice is blind."  I am pleased to report that 150 years later, we have seen the wisdom of NOT retaining each and every tradition we began with!   

So now, as we celebrate our history and look into the future, it is my job to answer the question -- what is the state of the judiciary in 1999? 

It is certainly good, and in fact, is getting better.  But I believe that in 1999, the state of our judiciary is: more important to Minnesotans than ever before.  Let me tell you why I believe that.

The people we serve – the citizens of our state -- need a well-functioning system of justice more than ever before.  We know this because more and more of them are coming into our courtrooms, and they are asking us to resolve more complex, controversial and difficult disputes. 

In the last ten years in Minnesota, our huge caseload growth has been driven almost exclusively by serious criminal and juvenile increase.  One of the chief factors underlying this phenomenon is the link between alcohol and drug abuse and criminal behavior.  I have said this before, but will say it again because it is so important – substance abuse is a factor in eight out of ten criminal cases, and has a substantial impact on many civil, family and juvenile matters. 

The answer to the question, “where does justice and the role of the court begin and where does it end,” is becoming more difficult to determine.  Often, we are expected to have a meaningful impact on litigants’ lives before they walk into the courtroom and after they leave it.  Particularly in family, juvenile and criminal areas, the courts are being drawn more and more into discussions of prevention and rehabilitation – and rightly so.

If we can successfully intervene in the life of a child, a parent or an individual who has just recently taken the wrong fork in the road, we have a far greater chance of steering them back to the path of a productive, healthy citizen.  If we wait until the child victim becomes an adult criminal, we are relegated to the role of gatekeepers, taking inventory of their path of destruction as they pass through our lives. 

The people we serve have asked us for more.

So how have we responded to the request for more effective justice?  For one, we continue to search for new ways to attack old problems that focus on earlier intervention, provision of needed services and judicial monitoring of individual progress.  Drug Court, community courts, restorative justice, family group conferencing and other innovations in handling child protection hearings are some examples.  In one way or another, these are all designed to achieve more successful and more meaningful outcomes.

Another way we have responded is through an array of legislative initiatives.  The Legislature has funded 13 new judgeships throughout the state of Minnesota, to be phased in over the next two years.  Although we had requested a minimum of 18 new judges, these new seats will begin to stem the backlog of our most immediate needs.  We are thankful for the legislative support we have received on this critical resource issue.

During the last several years, we have also pressed hard for additional technology funding.  And our needs for new case management and integrated information systems at both the state and local levels will be an even higher priority in coming legislative sessions.  Improved information and supporting integrated technology is in my view, perhaps THE strategic issue for the next decade.  It is our key issue not because state of the art technology and hardware are nice things to have, but because accurate and thorough information is at the heart of what we do in the judiciary.

Right now, we have totally inadequate information about the people who come before us and about the effectiveness of the dispositions we impose.  In Minnesota, we spend over one billion dollars a year on the criminal justice system and we have very little idea if anything we do actually works -- simply because we do not have the means to track it.

In today’s day and age, adequate technology is the backbone of any well-functioning organization, and in the judiciary, the stakes are even higher.  Good information is critical to good decisions.  We cannot address the public’s demands for effective justice until we develop easily accessible and comprehensive databases on all critical aspects of the judicial system.  Our citizens and our public safety depend on it.

The demand for more effective justice has also driven our courts to work harder and faster than ever.  Under the leadership of Chief Judge Edward Toussaint, Minnesota’s Court of Appeals remains the fastest intermediate appellate court in the nation.  Last year that court added new resources to expedite the handling of juvenile, family and civil commitment cases.  They have also experimented with interactive-teleconferencing to make oral arguments easier for all parties to attend.

I am pleased to tell you that the Minnesota Supreme Court has succeeded in following the lead of the Court of Appeals and is now ranked by the National Center for State Courts as one of the three fastest in the country.  We have had a lot of change on the court in the past eighteen months, but have worked hard to build an effective and collegial body.  I am honored to work with six dedicated and thoughtful judges, whose support makes this a wonderful court on which to serve.

Since your last convention, two new members have joined the Supreme Court, following the retirement of Justices Esther Tomljanovich and Sandra Gardebring.  I would like to take this opportunity to formally introduce two individuals many of you already know and have had the pleasure of working with -- Justice Russell Anderson and Justice Joan Ericksen Lancaster.  Both trial court judges, with private and public legal backgrounds, they bring a wealth of experience and insights to our court.

The high quality of the judiciary’s decision-making as a whole, is due in large part to our excellent jurists and court employees.  At the District Court level, our judges and court staff continue to shoulder an incredible burden of increased caseloads.  This morning, Leslie Metzen, Chief Judge of the First Judicial District was elected Chair of the Conference of Chief Judges.  She succeeds the very capable Bill Walker, Chief Judge of the Seventh Judicial District.  Her vision for more effective justice, along with the leadership of the Conference and the Minnesota District Judges’ Association will be critical components of our ability to handle the challenges that lie ahead.

Among the most important of these challenges for both of us – bench and bar – is the question of public confidence in the courts.  At a time when trust in our societal institutions has reached a thirty-year low, we need people to believe in the judiciary and in the law more than ever.

We are all aware that government derives both its power and its moral authority from the consent of the governed.  And as you know, this is more true in the “third branch,” because it is our job to protect the unpopular and to seek the law in a way that is not based on the majority.  Our independence is our greatest strength and it is exactly what makes our nation’s system of democracy work so well.  But it is also our greatest vulnerability, because we need the trust and support of the people we serve to protect this independence.

As you might imagine, the first step to improving confidence is assessing confidence.  Your incoming president, Wood Foster, several other team members and I just returned from a national conference in Washington D.C., where judges, court administrators, lawyers and public leaders gathered to discuss ways to improve the public’s trust in the judicial system.

At this conference, the results of national public opinion surveys were released, which revealed a lot about how people view us.  These studies indicated that overwhelmingly, people still think we have the best justice system in the world.  They think judges are fair, qualified and equipped to do their jobs, and that court personnel are helpful and courteous. 

However, most people have some very serious concerns about the judiciary as well.  They think courts are far too expensive, they take too much time and are not easy to use or understand.  Most troubling is the fact that people of color in particular don’t feel the system treats them fairly.  Addressing these impressions, and the perceptions people have is critical to maintaining and improving their collective confidence in the institution.  Making the system work better also happens to be the right thing to do.

But taking accurate stock and making the system work better also requires us to distinguish perception from reality.  A Greek philosopher once said, “What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are.”  Today, there are some very prevalent perceptions of crime, law enforcement and the courts that are not a complete picture of reality.  Let me give you some examples. 

Many of you here would probably agree – at least in the abstract -- that crime has increased significantly in the last few decades.  That is a concept in which we almost all universally believe.  However, according to an annual National Crime Victims Survey, when you randomly ask people whether they have been the victims of a crime, they answer “yes” in nearly the same proportions today as they did in 1973, (although we have seen some fluctuations in the interim.)  Translated, that means Americans are about as vulnerable to violent crime today as we were twenty-five years ago, and we are actually less vulnerable to property crimes today.   These figures have an important bearing on our perceptions of public safety.

I know that some people are under the impression that juveniles are committing the most violent crimes in this nation and a new breed of remorseless, “super-predator” kids are responsible.  In reality, adults still commit seven out of every eight violent crimes, and according to the U.S. Department of Justice, although more juveniles are committing violent acts, their acts are not more violent.  This is not to minimize in any way the seriousness of juvenile crime, but to put it in perspective so we can address it properly; to find out where the myth ends and the facts begin. 

Certainly, the media is responsible for much of the information that we are receiving.  We all watch TV, we all read the newspapers and many of the cases we see have a sensationalistic value.  The cumulative effect of this information is to cause the public to have an impression not entirely in accordance with reality.

Minnesota courts, for example, are sometimes criticized for being too soft on crime.  I’m sure many of you have heard this criticism.  In fact, Minnesota was one of the first states in the nation to implement “truth in sentencing” guidelines – and the reality is that Minnesota incarcerates violent offenders for longer sentences than any other state in the country except Maine.

Many believe that our courts take far too long to resolve cases.  While I would be the first to agree that justice delayed is justice denied, you should also know that in many areas, Minnesota’s courts are among the fastest in the nation.  In addition to the statistics I cited earlier regarding the appellate level,  the average major civil case is resolved in four and a half months, while the average major criminal case takes just three months to complete.

We have also been criticized because our imprisonment rates are the lowest in the nation, that essentially, we aren’t locking up enough people.  That particular statistic does not take into account any offenders serving time in jails.  When you look at Minnesota’s overall rate of incarceration for felons, including jails and prisons, we lock up 87% of them.  You also might not know that Minnesota has the largest percentage of maximum-security inmates in the nation.

Again, I want to reiterate that the picture I have just painted is not meant to minimize in any way the importance of addressing crime.  Indeed – it clearly is good public policy to devote the necessary resources to appropriately respond to crime.  But it is critical that the bench and bar try to help assure that the response to crime and other issues that reach the courts are based not on impressions, but rather on a more accurate and complete picture.

So, in that spirit, we intend to take an accurate picture of what Minnesotans think of their judiciary.  We are conducting our own public trust and confidence survey.  Based on questions and methodologies used in the national studies, Minnesotans will be asked what they like about our system, what they don’t like, whether it’s easy to use, whether it’s affordable and whether we treat people fairly. 

And once we have analyzed the data and determined where the perceptions are indeed reality, we will use these opinions as the basis for an aggressive plan to improve our branch of government and to address the real concerns of the citizens.  We will continue to call on the bar for input in the development and implementation of these strategies.

And where we find that public perception does not square with reality, we will be developing a targeted plan to do a better job of communicating reality more effectively to the public.  We need the bar’s help here as well.

As you know, we have already been engaged in a statewide program of community outreach.  It is a top priority to make the judiciary more understandable and to “demystify” the processes that still confuse so many.  But the ultimate reason we are “reaching out” is to help bring the public in.  While the judicial branch will do all we can to address the challenges I have outlined today, we need the bar’s help and the public’s help to do it.  Justice is bigger than our courts.

So, because the state of the judiciary is more important than ever, I ask for your help today to maintain and improve the underpinning of the public’s support.  While there are only 277 of us judges in the state, there are over 20,000 lawyers. 

As I mentioned earlier, I am very pleased that we have so many competent attorneys practicing in Minnesota.  Because I was also an attorney, I know that from time to time, it is easy to feel “under-appreciated.”  You may take some comfort in knowing that this is not a new phenomenon and that your actual numbers have nothing to do with the public’s sentiment.  Over 200 years ago, 1770 to be exact, the Grafton County Clerk in New Hampshire conducted a census and wrote the following to His Royal Highness George III:

“Noble Sire, I have the pleasure to report as follows: 

Grafton County New Hampshire consists of 1,249 square miles and contains 6,429 souls.  Most are engaged in agriculture but among the others we have:

• 67 carpenters
• 49 wheelwrights
• 87 ministers of the Lord
• 11 doctors
• 20 slaves
• 90 students at the new College (Dartmouth)
• and not one lawyer, for which Blessed and Happy State, we take no personal credit but thank an Almighty and Merciful God.”

Unlike the clerk from Grafton County, I stand here to thank you for your presence, your past leadership, and to inform you that as we shape the judiciary of the future, we need ALL your voices, your involvement and your engagement.  It is my hope that you will accept the challenge, and work with us to meet the demands of effective justice in the next millennium.

John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, said, “Next to doing right, the greatest goal in the administration of justice should be public satisfaction.”  Over two hundred years later, this statement rings truer than ever. 

Thank you very much.