Court Opinion

ID: 9577266
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:33:31.767161+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:20:16.677009
License: Public Domain

HAYS, Chief Justice
(concurring) :
A quotation from a concurring opinion of Chief Justice Weintraub of New Jersey is most apt here. Although the legal subject matter in that opinion is in the criminal field, the ideas expressed therein fit the problems of this case as though tailored for them. In State of New Jersey v. Victor R. Funicello, 60 N.J. 60 at 69, 286 A.2d 55 at 59-60, Chief Justice Weintraub said:
“Judicial management is high among present priorities. The courts being unable to meet the demands upon them, it is understandable that among the solvents would be a proposal that the judiciary borrow rudimentary principles from the business world. The first rule of good management must be that management shall manage. A work force cannot be effective if it cannot know how it is to function. I. can think of no area in which- guidance • is more vital; than the area of criminal law, for it is an area of intense activity, touching every citizen. The case before us dramatizes the failure to provide direction and suggests the Federal and State judiciaries cannot meet their responsibilities unless some rules are changed.”
I intend no disrespect for our highest court when I indicate many times in the recent past that court has failed to realize the burdens of uncertainty they have cast upon the state courts. Good management of our state’s legal business requires definitive answers now. A half answer which requires a guess as to what the high court really means, does nothing more than compound our problems of judicial management.
In this case, we really ask for a clearer command before we declare an established law of our state unconstitutional and disrupt the business and legal practices of our community.