Court Issues and Victims’ Rights
Court Structures and Issues
In the 1920s, one of the reasons for the creation of municipal courts was to relief the congestion of cases within the superior courts. The 1998 decision by California to eliminate municipal courts was to provide more judges at the superior court level. The thought was that it could help reduce the caseload at superior courts. Therefore, 70 years later we are back to the way it was before. Many dynamics lead to those two decisions. Criminal behavior in our society continues to change and public pressure drives the need to change laws. Both those changes were made for different reasons and had merit when they were being implemented. There are advantages and disadvantages to the 1998 proposal to consolidate. In addition, to implement the change the court administrators needed to take actions that would help make the consolidation work. Caseloads are still on the rise so an additional recommendation was to create specialized courts that benefit the community.
Advantages of Consolidating Municipal and Superior Court The state funds trial courts. Depending on the jurisdiction, those courts are called city courts, municipal courts, county courts, circuit courts, courts of common pleas, district courts, or magistrate courts. Technically, most of the lower courts are not part of the state judicial structure because they are the creation of, and funded by, either city or county governments. In several states, judges of the lower courts are not required to have any formal legal training. The lower courts typically deal with minor cases, such as ordinance and traffic violations, some misdemeanors, and many jurisdictions, civil cases involving less than $1000 (Bohm & Haley, 2010). Variously called district courts, superior courts, and circuit courts, depending on the jurisdiction, more than 3,000 trial