Pennsylvania

In May, the Colorado Judicial Branch announced that a pilot program allowing documents in family court cases to be filed online will expand. Many courts in the last year have implemented or bolstered their e-filing systems in order to keep the legal system moving amidst courthouse closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In response to record-breaking judicial election spending, and an unprecedented series of scandals involving supreme court justices, reform-minded folks in Pennsylvania are making historic strides toward change.

With three of the seven seats on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court up for election in November, the stakes were high in the May 19 primaries. The twelve candidates raised more than $5 million and spent approximately half of that on TV ads. The ads tended to focus on the need to restore the high court’s integrity, in light of the fact that two of the vacancies were created by resignations in the face of scandal.

Pennsylvania is one of two states that is electing supreme court justices in 2015. To provide the public with information about judges on the ballot, the Pennsylvania Bar Association offers ratings of appellate judicial candidates provided by the Bar's Judicial Evaluation Commission (JEC). But, a sitting commonwealth court judge and supreme court candidate has called that evaluation process into question.

In 2010, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania established an E-Discovery Special Masters Pilot Program with the goal of developing an approved list of special masters to assist with monitoring electronic discovery compliance, narrowing and facilitating resolution of e-discovery disputes, and providing reports and recommendations to the judge, as necessary. A recent article from Law Technology News highlights the successes of the program.

For the first time in more than 40 years, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has amended its Code of Judicial Conduct. Among the new rules is a provision that requires judges to recuse themselves from hearing cases where the judge knows or learns that a party, a party's lawyer, or the law firm of a party's lawyer has made a direct or indirect contribution(s) to the judge's campaign.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review recently published an article about proposed legislation to change the Pennsylvania judicial selection process. IAALS Executive Director Rebecca Love Kourlis was interviewed in the article about the proposed legislation and the benefits of merit selection. She noted that the Pennsylvania proposal contains the front-end nominating commission process endorsed by IAALS as the O'Connor Judicial Selection Plan.

In a recent opinion dissenting from the denial of certiorari in an Alabama death penalty case, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned whether the pressures of partisan judicial elections influence judges' decisions in cases involving hot-button issues like capital punishment. Social scientists have examined the question before, and have come to similar conclusions.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers have introduced a bill calling for a move to merit selection for judges of Pennsylvania's appellate courts. The proposed constitutional amendment would replace partisan elections with a commission-based gubernatorial appointment and senate confirmation process. And, the time may be right for selection reform in the state, according to a recent survey.

Pennsylvania is one of at least four states that holds judicial elections in off-years. This November, two candidates competed for a seat on the superior court (an intermediate appellate court) and four appellate judges, including two supreme court justices, stood for retention. Additionally, in New York, voters considered a proposed constitutional amendment that would have raised the mandatory retirement age for judges on the state's highest court and major trials courts.