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Chief Justice: More judges won't erase case pileup By BRENT DEAN ~ Guardian Staff Reporter ~ brentldean@nasguard.com: Simply increasing the number of judges on the bench would not magically reduce the number of cases waiting to be heard before the Supreme Court, according to Chief Justice Sir Burton Hall. "Well, you could always make an argument for more judges and more courtrooms, but the society could never hire the number of judges to deal with the volume of disputes which that society generates before the courts," he said in an interview at his chambers on Wednesday. "A greater number of judges would obviously, logically, mean that there would be more persons to do the work, but it would be naive to suppose that it is possible for the state to come up with a magical number of judges that would make this cue disappear." Sir Burton, who is retiring in August to become a judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, does not like the word backlog to describe the number of cases waiting to be heard before the Supreme Court. The backlog of criminal cases in the Supreme Court, or cue as Sir Burton prefers to call it, has been an issue of public debate over the last several years as the levels of crime and violence increased in the country. There have been public calls for more judges to be put on the bench to ease the backlog of criminal cases. In February, a Nassau Guardian probe put the number of criminal cases to be heard before the Supreme Court in excess of 400, with only three judges sitting on the criminal bench at that time (two in Nassau and one in Grand Bahama). As a result of the refurbishment of the old Supreme Court complex at Bank Lane, which is expected to begin in November, Attorney General Michael Barnett said during the budget debate in the Senate that four criminal courts would be able to sit at the same time. The number of Supreme Court judges is fixed in law. The Supreme Court Act says that there should be no fewer than three and no more than 12 judges (including the chief justice). Sir Burton said the overall issue of the cue of cases before the court, including the divisions beyond the criminal court, results from people being unable to settle their disputes. "The reality is...that there are a limited number of judicial officers and the notion of everybody going to court to have their disputes resolved means that there will inevitably be a cue. Judges, magistrates, registrars, anybody who is a judicial officer can only deal with one case at a time and each case must wait its turn in the cue," he said. "One of the things that the public is, I suppose understandably, very agitated about (is) the number of criminal matters, but at the level of the Supreme Court, if you look at the gross numbers, criminal cases form a very small percentage of the overall work of the Supreme Court. The vast majority of cases are in the Matrimonial Division and in the Common Law and Equity Division." Sir Burton has come under public criticism for working primarily in the Matrimonial Division of the court. In a recent article in one of the dailies, unnamed sources criticized him for making this decision. Sir Burton was amazed that lawyers did not have the "courage" to name themselves before making these statements. "I see that I have come into some criticism for concentrating on that," he said. "There is a reason why I have preferred to spend most of my time doing that type of work. Apart from believing the importance of family matters in the overall scheme of things, it allowed me more time to deal with the myriad administrative problems that come with the office of chief justice." In recent years, there have been 1,000 divorces on average per year before the courts. Along with being important, Sir Burton said that these cases are time consuming and the case process is tedious. With the large volume of cases coming before this division of the court, along with the number of business and labor disputes, along with other matters, Sir Burton argued that delays would result. "If in a society of 300,000 persons, say 100,000 working persons, persons decided by and large not to solve their disputes among themselves but to go to court then it means that the 11 or 12 judges who sit to hear matters will be able to deal with those matters only as they finish another one. And that is a fact of life in The Bahamas and every other part of the world," he said. Despite the planned upgrade to the old Supreme Court Building, all judges still would not be in one judicial complex, which is what Sir Burton thinks would be best. For those who suggest bringing on more judges to help reduce the number of cases to be heard, Sir Burton asked: "Where would they go?" He also said that the court has difficulty maintaining three panels of 48 jurors to hear criminal matters. "And it has always struck me as odd that the business community, which tends to be very vocal in its criticism of the judicial system, tends to be very reluctant to facilitate their employees serving on juries," Sir Burton said. The challenge to find the additional jurors to service the additional courts some say should be created, is an issue that is often lost in public discourse, he added. Friday, July 3, 2009