Political Quotes

“I rise in support of H.R. 988, the Attorney Accountability Act of 1995. It is widely believed that the American legal system no longer serves to expedite justice and ensure fair results. It has become burdened with excessive costs and long delays. For many people, especially middle and lower income litigants, justice is often delayed and as a result is often denied. For instance, in 1985, the percent of civil cases over 3 years old in Federal district courts was 6.6 percent. Five years later that figure grew to 10.4 percent. In addition to excessive costs and long delays, the American legal system has been hurt by an overreliance on litigation. According to Judge Stanley Marcus, chairman of the Judicial Conference Committee on Federal-State Jurisdiction, If present trends continue, the federal courts' civil caseload will double every fourteen years, and in the twenty-eight years between 1992 and 2020 the compounded effect of that doubling and redoubling will raise the annual number of civil cases commenced from roughly 226,000 per year to nearly 840,000 per year. Judge Marcus went on to observe that Under current workload standards this volume of litigation would require an enormous increase in the number of district judges and circuit judges, transforming the existing nature of the federal judicial system virtually beyond recognition. The overuse of litigation imposes tremendous costs upon American taxpayers, businesses, and consumers.”