Statement of the Honorable Lamar Smith

Chairman, Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and

Intellectual Property

Oversight Hearing on

“The Federal Judiciary:

Is there a Need For Additional Federal Judges?”

June 24,2003

            Today the Subcommittee will review the proposal of the Judicial Conference of the United States for the creation of new federal judgeships and the methodology upon which the proposal is based.

            The Judicial Conference biannually reviews the judgeship needs for all U.S. courts of appeal and U.S. district courts. The Conference then submits its recommendations to Congress. Today’s hearing will focus on the Conference’s March, 2003, recommendations.

            The Conference recommends that Congress create positions for 11 new courts of appeal judges, 46 new district court judges, and make permanent five temporary district court judges.

            In developing judgeship recommendations, the Conference, through its committee structure, reviews district court needs based in large part on standards adopted in 1993 related to the caseload of judges.

            Every case filed in a district court is assigned a weight. The weight represents the average amount of a judge’s time the case is expected to require. In courts of appeal, nearly every case filed is assigned a weight of one because it is assumed that all cases have an equal impact on judges’ workloads.

            When the annual weighted case filings per authorized judgeship in a court reach a certain level, the Conference may consider requesting additional judgeships for that court.            

            The Conference also takes into account additional criteria that may influence judgeship needs, including senior judge and magistrate judge assistance, geographical factors and unusual caseload complexity.

            In March, I sent a letter to the General Accounting Office requesting that it determine if the weighted and adjusted case filing systems accurately calculate the workload of judges.

            In its report, the GAO concluded that while the methodology used to develop the weights for district courts filings produced valid results, the weights were adopted in 1993 and based on data collected as long as 15 years ago. GAO cautions that changes since 1993 may have affected whether the weights continue to be a reasonably accurate measure of the average time burden on district court judges.

            The Conference’s Subcommittee on Judicial Statistics has approved a plan for updating its methodology. The GAO has two concerns with the new approach. First, it would rely on data from two different case management data systems so it will be difficult to integrate the data from the two systems into reliable and useful analysis.

            Second, the plan will not require judges to actually document time spent on a case. Because of this, the GAO feels any assessment of case weights would not be objective.

            With regard to judgeship needs on courts of appeal, the adjusted filings measure, adopted in 1996, is similar to a measure the GAO reviewed in 1993. Neither measure is based on any data involving the actual judge time required by different types of cases in the courts of appeal.

            In 1993, the GAO recommended that the Conference improve its workload measure for the courts of appeal, specifically by requiring judges to document how they spend their time on cases.

            The GAO concluded that “...given the importance and cost of federal judgeships, this would be a good investment to ensure that the workload measures that are used to support judgeship requests are reasonably accurate and based on the best data available using sound research methods.”

            My conclusion is that after ten years, it is disappointing that an accurate and objective methodology has not been developed by the Conference, especially considering the important work of federal judges.

            The gentleman from California, Mr. Berman, is recognized for his opening statement.