The Old Order Changes

I join Professor Meador in welcoming you all to this 2005 National Conference on Appellate Justice, a sequel to the 1975 National Conference on Appellate Justice. The original 1975 Conference got good reviews. We have high hopes for the sequel. The major hallmark of both the original and sequel is the active joint efforts of federal and state judges and academic and practicing lawyers in both the planning and execution of the Conference, as well as the efforts of the National Center for State Courts, the Federal Judicial Center, the N.Y.U. Institute of Judicial Administration, and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers. We thank the Co-Chairs and Members of the Steering Committee for this well-thought-out program. In this sequel, we are fortunate to have a handful of the original cast, but we rely mainly on new players. Few of us were on the appellate scene thirty years ago. In the sequel, the venue has been changed from the sunny Hotel Coronado in San Diego to the depths of the Hotel Hyatt Regency and the intrigues of Washington D.C. In the sequel, we leave the twentieth century behind and forge into the twenty-first century. The original version was designed to examine the controversial and disturbing changes that were developing in appellate courts. In the latter half of the twentieth century, appellate courts devised novel internal procedures designed to preserve traditional appellate values in the real world of hugely increasing dockets. The traditional values are that the judges personally decide cases and write opinions. Changes in appellate practice, including increasingly large staffs, had developed over the years and have been woven, as Professor Meador explained, into the appellate fabric. Yestercentury's innovations to resolve yestercentury's problems have created new problems to be resolved in this century. Problems beget solutions. Solutions beget new problems, and we hope this Conference will beget different or refined innovative solutions. The 2005 sequel takes stock of the increased volume of appeals and also the new issues brought to the fore by the rapid rate of social, economic, technological, and scientific changes. Technology has replaced predictable progression with change that is exponential. E-everything with electronic filing, discovery of electronic documents, videoconferencing, and computerized and internet research affect the entire judicial system. It appears that nothing stands still long enough for us to get a good handle on it. Our lives, as Learned Hand said in an earlier, easier era, seem to be "made up of a series of judgments on insufficient data, and if we waited to run down all our doubts, it would flow past us." (1) The first session tomorrow morning will discuss the position of appellate courts today, that is, empirical data about the demand for and supply of appellate services. The second session will be directed toward the relationship between appellate courts and other institutions of government, and between appellate courts and the media and public. This session will focus on the increased visibility of courts. The third session deals with the challenge of volume in intermediate courts, including the proliferation of appeals filed by self-represented persons, the desirability of maintaining greater openness and transparency in the appellate process, and the effect of technological advances. The final session will be directed to the law-declaring function of courts and maximizing uniformity and coherence in appellate decisions within a jurisdiction. A significant difference between the original and the sequel is that a whole day was devoted in 1975 to criminal justice on appeal, probably because of popular dissatisfaction with the slow disposition of criminal appeals, disparity in sentencing, and LEAA partial funding of the first Conference. (2) Criminal justice issues, although the source of many TV dramas these days and much public concern, are not highlighted in the sequel. …