History of Court Administration
Over the years, court administrators have become an integral part of judicial management because the effectiveness of the judiciary resides in organizational competence. Courts must keep pace with increasingly complex caseloads and the increasing focus on the performance of the judicial system. The ability to address those and other challenges requires effective management by judges within the courtroom as well as by administrators outside of it. In August 1969, soon after he became Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Warren E. Burger observed, “The courts of this country need management, which busy and overworked judges, with drastically increased caseloads, cannot give. We need a corps of trained administrators or managers to manage and direct the machinery so that judges can concentrate on their primary duty of judging. Such managers do not now exist, except for a handful who are almost entirely confined to state court systems. We must literally create a corps of court administrators or managers and do it at once.” As a result of Chief Justice Burger’s efforts, and those of other leaders in the field, court administrators have become an essential part of the federal, state, and local courts.
Source: National Association for Court Management
