Opinion ID: 1875038
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: supplemental resources

Text: Supplemental resources are in place to assist our judges in the fundamental mission of safeguarding Floridians' constitutional rights of due process, equal protection, and access to courts. This is accomplished by providing vital assistance to our judges with their caseloads through judicial assistants, case managers, law clerks, and magistrates, by providing for mediation of certain case types to reduce the number of time-consuming trials, and by ensuring the efficient and effective operation of the trial courts through court administration. The Legislature recognized the validity and value of these resources by funding each of these categories of resources as elements of the State Courts System during the 2004 Legislative Session. The weighted caseload system factors existing supplemental resources into its analysis. Thus, we emphasize that the case weights and the corresponding need for judges would be much higher had those resources not been available or not been considered in the methodology. Many chief judges have reported the positive effects of these resources in their circuits. With the increase in the use of supplemental resources made possible by Revision 7 funding in circuits where such resources were previously scarce or nonexistent, we stress again the need to conduct a reevaluation of the current weighted caseload system.