Indiana Judge Makes Case for Court Reform

Indiana Court of Appeals Chief Judge John Baker makes lofty arguments for why the state needs major court reform to occur in the next legislative session.

“Why does it take a year and a half to get a divorce in one county when it takes six months in another?” said Baker. “Divorce is hell anyway, why drag out the process of dissolving a bad marriage?”

The answer, he said, has to do with disproportionate case loads in which some Indiana counties have too many court cases, too few judges to hear them and no capacity to help each other out.

But also part of the answer, he said, is what he calls the “Balkanization” of Indiana’s courts.

He labels the situation as “a fragmented system of mutually hostile units resistant to cooperation and change.”

It’s that system that he and others cite when talking about streamlining Indiana’s judicial system and making more efficient use of the $400 million in state tax dollars spent on it last year.

The time for reform seems ripe: The number of court cases in Indiana rose by more than 16 percent in the past decade but funding and resources haven’t kept pace.

Last week, state budget officials estimated a $700 million shortfall in revenues going into the biennial budget-making session that starts in January.

“When resources get tight, people have to get more efficient,” Baker said

That’s why he argues “with passion” in favor of a reform plan laid out in 2009 by the Indiana Judicial Conference, whose membership is made up of full-time judges in Indiana.

The plan, called “A New Way Forward,” proposed major changes in the court system at the local level.

Baker doesn’t expect the changes he wants to come quickly.

“My experience with reform in Indiana is that it moves a little faster than the glaciers,” he said.

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Judges Making Case of Court Reform