Oregon Court of Appeals Chief Judge David Brewer announced significant cuts to the court this morning, in a letter to colleagues:
Dear Colleagues,The Oregon Judicial Department has suffered significant budget reductions for the remaining few months of the 2007-09 fiscal biennium. Although not as severe as initially feared, the reductions will nonetheless impair the operations of every court and division of the judicial branch of government, including the Court of Appeals. My purpose here is to report on the effect of these reductions on the Court of Appeals and to inform you about the plan we are implementing to meet these challenges.
These budget reductions will result in cuts to the Court of Appeals' research and opinion production staffing in two significant ways. First, every member of the Court of Appeals staff—including staff attorneys, law clerks, and judicial assistants—must take six days of unpaid leave between now and June 30, resulting in a 7.5% reduction in staff resources over that period. Further, because of the cuts, the court had to lay off the few temporary staff attorneys that it had hired to help the court bring its excess case load more current.
Worse, the state's May revenue forecast is expected to show even greater declines. The legislature will set the 2009-11 budget based on those numbers. In short, we do not anticipate sufficient funding to ensure the Court of Appeals’ ability to wholly fulfill its commitment to quality, timeliness, and efficiency in rendering appellate decisions, while promoting public confidence in the appellate process.
Blimey. And It gets worse...
For years before the present budget shortfall, the Court of Appeals has labored with too few resources to meet its caseload. A recently published study showed that the Oregon Court of Appeals was last in budget per-case nationally among similarly structured intermediate appellate courts. While the current budget climate makes it impossible to address demands on services in all branches of government, deeper or even continued budget cuts will undermine the court’s ability to ensure meaningful appellate review in Oregon’s justice system.
Ouch. More details from the letter, after the jump.
To meet these challenges and enable the court to ensure meaningful appellate review, the court will pursue several measures: one addresses the present budget cuts; the remaining measures are necessary even without the cuts.• First, the court has curtailed its April oral argument calendar for each department from three days to two, to give our judges, who read thousands of pages of briefs each month in preparing for oral argument, time to assume research and draft work on opinions that staff attorneys and law clerks have traditionally helped with. The calendar for May and subsequent months is still tentative; we anticipate some reductions from our usual number of oral argument days until the end of biennium, if not beyond.
• Second, we will seek legislative authority to allow the court, as needed, to decide cases in two-judge panels (with a third judge added to break a tie vote) or use up to two pro tem judges in cases decided in three-judge panels.
• Third, we probably can no longer afford being one of the few state appellate courts that provides universal de novo review of trial court decisions in equity cases. Accordingly, we will ask the legislature to consider amendments to ORS 19.415 to permit the court to exercise de novo review on a discretionary basis, in much the same way that the Supreme Court currently employs that standard.
• Fourth, the court will consider amendments to the Oregon Rules of Appellate Procedure to modify briefing and oral argument conventions, including
reducing overall brief length limits
instituting a system in which the court designates cases for oral argument in lieu of the present universal privilege of oral argument in all attorney-represented cases. A universal privilege of oral argument is a rarity in appellate courts outside Oregon and, sadly, is another procedure that we cannot afford without additional resources.
We do not necessarily embrace all these measures, although several correspond to standard practice in other jurisdictions. They are instead tools for survival that may enable the court, hamstrung by inadequate resources, to continue to do its work competently and to limit the exponential delays we expect in scheduling oral argument and resolving appeals both now and in the years to come.
These are just some of the difficult decisions that we must make. In the recent past, the court was poised to improve its performance to historically unprecedented heights by making a case for additional much needed resources. Now, a markedly different paradigm will require all justice system stakeholders to decide what kind of justice system Oregon will have in the future. The legislature has to make funding decisions that will determine what we do in the future. In the meantime, the judges and staff of the Court of Appeals will do everything they can to provide the best possible work in the circumstances. As we do so, we appreciate your patience 3
and support for public justice in Oregon’s courts. Your questions and comments are important to us. Please feel free contact me at [phone number deleted] or Oregon Court of Appeals, 1163 State Street, Salem, Oregon 97301-2563.
David Brewer, Chief Judge
Oregon Court of Appeals
