2L Kimberly Taylor takes a look at the large backlog of cases in the New Jersey court system and considers looking to a former US President for solutions.

Oscar Wilde once said, “with age comes wisdom”—an appropriate tribute to the experience and knowledge our elders provide in everyday life. The unfortunate counterbalance to that statement is that aging eventually brings decline.

And it is squarely within that juxtaposition that the New Jersey court system finds itself, trying to deal with an unprecedented backlog of cases, created in no small part by a scarcity of presiding judges.

Perhaps we need to take a step back in time and reconvene a fireside chat with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to learn his idea of how to solve a court crisis.

While initial effects of the COVID-pandemic played a role in the current court’s traffic jam, clearing the docket has become much more complicated due to a diminished judiciary pool.

One reason for the extensive judicial vacancies is a New Jersey State Constitution requirement, Article VI, Section VI, paragraph 3, that judges must mandatorily retire from the bench when they reach age 70.

Because the appointment process for new justices can be arduous and often politically motivated, our state’s judicial progress has become worse than a Sunday evening drive home from the shore. In 90 degrees. With a broken air conditioner. It is not good, and the legal temperature is only getting worse. There must be a better answer when New Jersey residents cannot get simple adjudication on many civil or family matters.

Continue reading at mosaic.nj.com.

FDR
Court
New Jersey

Kimberly F. Taylor

By day, Kim is the Bi-College Title IX Coordinator at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, directing institutional efforts to address issues related to sexual and gender-based discrimination. In the evenings, she is pursuing her JD as a part-time student.

Kim has always been drawn to social justice issues, both through personal and professional experiences. She has spent the majority of her career in higher education, working in addition to Title IX, in campus safety, student conduct, prevention and advocacy, and crisis response. She is eager to merge her experiences as a practitioner with the knowledge and acumen that a law degree will provide. While her current focus is on gender equity, her “social injustice” lens continues to broaden, only deepening her commitment and belief that civil rights and human rights should be synonymous.