Chief Justice Toal Delivers SC State of the Judiciary Address
March 4, 2011
COLUMBIA, South Carolina: Chief Justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court, Jean Hoefer Toal, delivered her State of Judiciary address on March 2, 2011. She identified the current budget struggles of the state as an on-going concern but said that the "South Carolina Judicial Branch looks at tough times as a challenge".[1] The four main areas of focus she outlined for the future were:
- Management Techniques
- Business Models
- Processes
- Technology
Toal went on to say that the South Carolina justice system is in need of increased standardization between various courts and requires greater efficiency in the handling of court business. To that end, a Docket Management Task Force, headed by Justice Kaye Hearn, has been created. The Task Force will examine possible improvements with the state system's staffing, scheduling, and allocation of resources, using other states and the federal justice system as models. Toal points out that South Carolina is in great need of improvement in efficiency to best handle current court caseloads:
| We have the lowest number of judges per 100,000 of population and the highest case filing per judge. The national average for filing per judge is 1,755 cases per annum. In South Carolina, the average is a crushing 4,842 cases per judge per year. These aren't just the statistics, these are individual cases—criminal, civil, and family—which deeply affect the lives of individual civil litigants, individual defendants charged with a crime, individual victims, individual children, mothers, fathers, and grandparents.[1] |
The Chief Justice also highlighted the success that the Judicial Branch has had since 2000 in creating and implementing a statewide internet based platform to manage court operations. The model created by the South Carolina courts will be 100 percent operational in 2011 and has earned national recognition for increasing judicial effectiveness.
External links
- 2011 South Carolina State of the Judiciary Address
- State of the Judiciary Power Point Presentation
- Archived Video Version of Chief Justice Toal's Address
Footnotes
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