Political Quotes

“the Civil Justice Reform Act of 1990 established a process for developing new discovery and case management procedures designed to reduce costs and delay in Federal litigation. My amendment to S. 996 would make permanent one very successful reform from the Civil Justice Reform Act--the requirement that a list of each Federal judge's 6-month-old motions and 3-year-old cases be published and disseminated twice every year. According to the Rand Institute for Civil Justice, this public reporting requirement led to a 25 percent reduction in the number of cases pending more than 3 years in the Federal system, even though the total number of cases filed during the 4-year study period actually increased--proving again that Justice Brandeis was correct in saying that ``sunlight is the best disinfectant.'' This very effective reporting requirement will expire in December unless Congress acts. With my amendment, I seek to extend this reporting requirement. This amendment marks the first step in implementing the findings of the studies called for by the original Civil Justice Reform Act. The Rand study of the pilot projects set up by the act found that early judicial supervision of the discovery process can both reduce delay and litigation costs. These and other procedural reforms ought to be incorporated into the everday practices of our Federal bench to produced savings for the taxpayers and increase the efficiency of our Federal courts.”