American Judiciary in Slowdown

Reports suggest that as many as five million legal cases— criminal and civil—have been delayed by measures to fight the pandemic. That has affected everyone from advocates to judges to prisoners, litigants seeking redress and aspiring law graduates

- Kenneth Tiven

AN underreported aspect of the pandemic in the United States is its negative impact on almost all aspects of the judicial system. Piecing together what is available for America’s state and local courts suggests as many as five million legal cases—criminal and civil— have been delayed by measures to fight the pandemic. If the wheels of justice move slowly but grind finely, as the expression goes, it has gotten much worse for people at every point in the system, from advocates to judges to prisoners as well as civil litigants seeking redress.

This is extrapolated from two counties in the state of South Carolina, with a combined population of 663,000 people. The backlog is reported to be 10,000 delayed cases. Numbers like this across the 50 states suggest five million civil and criminal cases in state courts. South Carolina is not the most litigious of the 50 states. At the federal court level, there has been a greatly expanded use of technology, including temporarily authorising the use of video and teleconferencing technologies. Having more access to funding than available at the state level, it has been possible to increase bandwidth and use the latest in video technology to run the courts while still giving the public and the media access to listen.