Court Opinion

ID: 9705225
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:00:11.035579+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:09.009166
License: Public Domain

B. C. Riley, P. J.
(concurring). While I can do little to embellish Judge Mahinske’s fine opinion in the present case, I write separately to offer the following observation.
For apparently laudable motives, the Legislature has decided to enact reforms which, inter alia, accord expanded hearing rights to mentally retarded persons in guardianship proceedings. However praiseworthy this enactment may be, it remains an empty gesture so long as the Legislature fails to enhance accordingly the number of probate judges available for guardianship hearings.
To impose additional, comprehensive duties on judges already overburdened by ever-expanding dockets without a commensurate increase in their membership is to enact a palliative measure that will assuredly breed in the citizenry an unhealthy cynicism toward the law and its processes.
Thus, I echo the point made by Chief Justice Kavanagh when he expressed "the need for judicial impact statements” which would assess the effect pending legislation might have on the courts. The State of the Judiciary, 56 Mich BJ 301, 303 (1977).
I do not suggest, however, that augmentation of the judiciary is the only answer. "Administrative handling”, Id. at 302, may be entirely proper in certain circumstances. But where the Legislature has decreed that probate judges shall be charged with fixed responsibilities, as in the present case, it is no answer to add these duties without apparent consideration of their "impact on the courts”.