Judicial Workload
What is judicial workload
The timeliness of judgements and efficiency of courts are heavily influenced by judicial workload, which includes the number of court cases and their complexity, which is reflected in the judicial time required to resolve them.[1] Judicial workload is a term that is broader than the term caseload. ‘Caseload’ relates to activities carried out by the court solely for disposing of cases. ‘Workload’ includes not only the disposal of cases but also all the activities of judges, including training, meetings, and administrative tasks.[2]
Across the world, case-weighting systems have been accepted as the best method for measuring the workload of courts. Case weighting systems acknowledge that different cases have varying levels of complexity and require different amounts of judicial time and attention. Case weighting systems calculate judicial needs on the basis of total judicial workload. This has three components: Case counts, case weights and year-value.[3] In India, judicial workload studies to understand case pendency have a limited scope since the primary methodology they adopt only counts the number of pending cases and ignores the complexity of different case types and the differing capacities of judges.[4]
International Experiences
Judicial Workload Assessments- National Centre for State Courts, United States
The NCSC is an independent organisation that conducts workload assessments and helps to “translate caseload into workload”. The outcomes of workload assessments are quantifying budget requests to the legislature, analysing the distribution of judicial resources across states and managing the distribution of resources across case types. NCSC has conducted such assessments across 30 states. [5] The methodology involves weighing different cases to quantify their complexity and need for judicial attention- called the weighted caseload method. The workload assessment translates the number of cases that come before the court into the total amount of judicial work required to dispose of those cases. The assessment also takes into consideration non-court litigation time.[6] This is a participatory process where Judges and senior court administrative staff are directly involved at every stage of the process.[7]
Some of these studies include Iowa Judicial Officer Workload Assessment Study: 2016 Measuring Current Judicial Workload in Texas
Workload of Public Prosecutors
Some countries also have national systems for measuring the workload of public prosecutors to understand how to staff the prosecutors' office, efficiently distribute the workload, define budgetary needs and create performance indicators. For instance, Germany has a specific personnel requirements calculation system, ‘PEBB§Y’. PEBB§Y is used to calculate the needs of judges, the public prosecutors, and the judicial administrative staff. The criteria and estimated times are specific for each of the professionals.[8]
Research that engages with Judicial Workload
- Daksh, The State of the Indian Judiciary, Decoding Delays: An Analysis of Court data (2016).[9]
- Daksh, Time and Motion Study of Four District and Sessions Courts in Bangalore, Karnataka (2019).[10]
- Arunav Kaul, Performance Indicators: Working of Magistrates’ Courts in India.[11]
- Advay Vohra, Does the Supreme Court of India Work More Days than Other Top Courts Across the World? (SCO 2023)[12]
- Nick Robinson, A quantitative analysis of the Indian Supreme Court's Workload (Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 2012)[13]
- Li Yang, GJunlin Yi and Hui Peng, Big-Data Measurement-Model Research about Judges’ Actual Workload in China (Asian Journal of Law and Society 2021). [14] Junlin YI and Hui PENG , Big-Data Measurement-Model Research about Judges’ Actual Workload in China
References
- ↑ LÁSZLÓ ÖRKÉNYI, 'A New Method for an Objective Measurement of the Judicial Workload– the Application of a Prediction Model Based on an Algorithm Formed by Multiple Linear Regression in Court Administration' (2022 International Journal of Court Administration) available at: https://iacajournal.org/articles/10.36745/ijca.407
- ↑ European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice, 'Case weighting in European Judicial Systems' (2018), available at: https://rm.coe.int/cepej-saturn-2017-7erev10e-case-weighting/16808ccb22
- ↑ Matthew Kleiman, Richard Y. Schauffler, Brian J. Ostrom & Cynthia G. Lee,'Weighted caseload: a critical element of modern court administration' (2019) International Journal of the Legal Profession, available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09695958.2018.1490293
- ↑ Rahul Hemrajani & Himanshu Agarwal , 'A temporal analysis of the Supreme Court of India’s workload' (2019) Indian Law Review,available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24730580.2019.1636751
- ↑ NCSC, 'Workload Assessment', available at: https://www.ncsc.org/consulting-and-research/areas-of-expertise/court-management-and-performance/workload-assessment
- ↑ NCSC, Workload and Resource Assessment Resource Guide (2018), available at: https://cdm16501.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/ctadmin/id/2322
- ↑ Matthew Kleiman et al, 'Workload Assessment: A data driven management tool for the judicial branch' (2013) available at: https://ncsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/ctadmin/id/2088
- ↑ Council of Europe, 'Comparative Study on the Workload of Public Prosecutors in Selected Council of Europe Member States', available at: https://rm.coe.int/comparative-study-workload-eng/16809f0001
- ↑ Daksh, The State of the Indian Judiciary, Decoding Delays: An Analysis of Court data (2016) available at: https://www.dakshindia.org/state-of-the-indian-judiciary/11_chapter_01.html#_idTextAnchor009
- ↑ Daksh, Time and Motion Study of Four District and Sessions Courts in Bangalore, Karnataka (2019) https://www.dakshindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/DAKSH-TIME-AND-MOTION-STUDY-OF-FOUR-DISTRICT-AND-SESSIONS-COURTS-3.pdf.
- ↑ Arunav Kaul, Performance Indicators: Working of Magistrates’ Courts in India, available at: https://www.dakshindia.org/Daksh_Justice_in_India/23_chapter_02.xhtml
- ↑ Advay Vohra, Does the Supreme Court of India Work More Days than Other Top Courts Across the World? (SCO 2023), available at: https://www.scobserver.in/journal/a-comparative-analysis-of-top-courts-worldwide-how-does-the-indian-court-fare/
- ↑ Nick Robinson, A quantitative analysis of the Indian Supreme Court's Workload (Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 2012), available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2189181
- ↑ Li Yang, GJunlin Yi and Hui Peng, Big-Data Measurement-Model Research about Judges’ Actual Workload in China (Asian Journal of Law and Society 2021), available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/asian-journal-of-law-and-society/article/bigdata-measurementmodel-research-about-judges-actual-workload-in-china/FDC76913B38D971C33284F7B502BDE35.
