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The Ohio Judicial Council: Studies and Reports

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

F. R. Aumann
F. R. Aumann
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Extract

On April 6,1923, the Ohio legislature passed an act creating a Judicial Council charged with making a continuous study of the organization, rules, and methods of practice of the courts of that state, the work accomplished, and the results produced by the judicial system and its various parts. Hampered by a lack of funds during its first years of life, this body seemed destined to languish and waste away. In 1929, however, all was changed, for in that year the Council succeeded in arranging with the Institute of Law of the Johns Hopkins University for a three-year study of judicial administration in Ohio. This survey, which represented the first of a series of state-wide studies of “law-in-action” contemplated by the Institute of Law, proposed not only to organize technical research in connection with the actual operation of the courts, but to go beyond this and look into causes and effects of law administration in the social process. More specifically, it proposed, among other things: (1) to study the trends of litigation and ascertain its human causes and effects; (2) to study the machinery and functioning of the various agencies and offices which directly or indirectly have to do with the administration of law; (3) to locate precisely and definitely the reasons for delays, expenses, and uncertainty in litigation; (4) to institute a permanent system of judicial records and statistics which would automatically provide information now secured only after great labor; (5) to detect the points at which changes in substantive law would contribute markedly to social justice; and (6) to consider the results of the aforesaid analyses and make recommendations based thereon.

Type
Judicial Organization and Procedure
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 27 , Issue 6 , December 1933 , pp. 957 - 963
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1933

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References

1 See Aumann, F. R., “The Ohio Judicial Council Embarks on a Survey of Justice”, in this REVIEW, Vol. 24, No. 2 (May, 1930)Google Scholar.

2 First Report of the Judicial Council of Ohio to the General Assembly of Ohio Convening January 5, 1931.

3 These numbers have since been changed slightly.

4 Between 1922 and 1929, the volume of business of the common pleas courts increased fifty per cent. The number of judges remained stationary, but the average number of cases disposed of per judge increased seventy per cent. During the same period, the average cost per case was reduced from $38.25 in 1922 to $21.30 in 1927, thereby saving over $1,000,000 in five years, with additional large savings in 1928 and 1929. First Report of the Judicial Council, pp. 13–14.

5 Second Report of the Judicial Council of Ohio to the General Assembly of Ohio Convening January 2 1933.

6 The status of these materials, in December, 1932, was reported as follows:

“(1) Individual data sheets covering over 9,000 cases filed in the common pleas courts, during the first six months of 1930, having been gathered, checked, coded, punched, and run on the statistical machine. In addition, a tally has been made of all criminal cases filed in the years 1930 and 1931;

(2) Data sheets covering 9,000 divorce actions disposed of in the common pleas courts and probate courts during the second six months of 1930, and 4,000 inquiries from plaintiffs and defendants in these divorce actions have been gathered, checked, coded, punched, and run;

(3) Data sheets for 30,000 civil actions, other than divorce, filed in the common pleas courts during the first six months of 1930, have been gathered, and have all been checked. The materials for three counties, Cuyahoga, Hamilton, and Franklin, have been processed so that they may be correlated with the data for the studies of the municipal courts of Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus.

(4) Data sheets for 1,300 cases filed in the supreme court during the years 1927–29, and for 3,000 cases filed during the year 1930 in the various courts of appeal, have been processed, and the report, including an analysis of the appellate work of the common pleas court, is complete.

(5) Some 7,000 cases, being a sample of the cases filed in the justice of the peace courts of Hamilton county during five years, have been analyzed and the results published; 10,000 cases, being a sample of the cases filed in the mayor's courts of Hamilton county, Ohio, have been analyzed.

(6) Data sheets have been gathered on some 25,000 cases filed in the municipal courts of Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. The cases in Cleveland and Columbus were filed in 1930. In Cincinnati, the sample reaches back five years.”

(7) Several thousand data sheets covering the activities of the public utilities commission have been filled out, and a report is in preparation.” Second Report of the Judicial Council of Ohio to the General Assembly of Ohio, January 2, 1932, p. 12.

7 Hotchkiss, Willis L. and Gehlke, Charles E., Uniform Classifications for Judicial Criminal Statistics, with Particular Reference to Classifications of Dispositions (Johns Hopkins Press, 1931, pp. 140)Google Scholar.

8 Marshall, L. C., Comparative Judicial Criminal Statistics: Ohio and Maryland (Johns Hopkins Press, 1932, pp. 88)Google Scholar.

9 Douglas, Paul H., The Justice of the Peace Courts of Hamilton County, Ohio (Johns Hopkins Press, 1932, pp. 125)Google Scholar.

10 Marshall, L. C., Comparative Judicial Criminal Statistics: Six States, 1931 (Johns Hopkins Press, 1932, pp. 61)Google Scholar.

11 Bettman, Alfred, Jamison, W. C., Marshall, L. C., and Miles, R. E., Ohio Criminal Statistics, 1931 (Johns Hopkins Press, 1932, pp. 189)Google Scholar.

12 Paul H. Douglas, The Mayor's Courts of Hamilton County, Ohio (In press).

13 Silas A. Harris, Appellate Courts and Appellate Procedure in Ohio (In press).

14 Ruth Reticker, Expenditure of Public Money for the Administration of Justice in Ohio for the Year 1930 (In press).

15 Billing, Thomas C., Equity Receiverships in the Common Pleas Court of Franklin County, Ohio, in the Years 1927 and 1928 (Johns Hopkins Press, 1932, pp. 172)Google Scholar.

16 H. E. Yntema, Analysis of Ohio Municipal Court Acts (In mimeograph form).

17 “There are in the General Code of Ohio thirty-three special acts creating municipal courts, in addition to seven acts creating municipal police courts. These acts provide municipal courts of limited jurisdiction for as many cities, including all cities in the state of more than 35,000 people and all except two of more than 20,000 population. The general plan followed by these acts is more or less homogeneous, but in detail the provisions which they include present an amazing and unnecessary variety, not merely with respect to the organization of the courts created, but also with respect to their jurisdictional powers, their practice and procedure, and even as to the law to be applied in particular instances. And to add to the intricacy of the situation, the jurisdictions of these courts are largely concurrent with that of common pleas.” Yntema, Hessel E., Draft of a Uniform Municipal Court Act for the State of Ohio (Institute of Law, Johns Hopkins University), p. 3 Google Scholar.

18 In March, 1933, an introductory report was made by L. C. Marshall on the study of divorce statistics in Ohio. Suggestions for the improvement of the statistical system for divorce litigation are presented under three main heads: (a) the present status of statistical reporting in the field; (b) a quite simple plan for improving Ohio divorce statistics, a plan that involves no significant change in the methods now used in recording the original data; and (c) a comprehensive plan which presupposes more adequate original data.

19 ’There have been but three main currents … through which these countless millions of trial court cases, with their infinitude of happenings, have influenced the presentation of law in formal instruction. (1) Certain issues, frequently quite technical issues, have been carried up to the higher courts and the decisions in some of these have become embodied in the reported cases. These reported appellate cases, as well as some reported trial court cases, have constituted the field of vision open to the case method of legal instruction. That the image thus secured of the actual happenings in the trial courts is distorted in certain essential particulars, probably no one would deny. Many persons assert that it is simply not recognizable. (2) There have been a handful of “surveys” of the activities of these trial courts, mostly in the field of criminal justice. These surveys have attempted—with considerable success in local jurisdictions—realistic, objective, generalized analyses of law in action in the lower courts, and their effect has been unmistakably wholesome. To date, however, these surveys have been so few, they have been conducted in such circumscribed fields, and on such little-comparable bases, that their leaven cannot be said to have had much effect upon legal instruction. (3) Quite a few devices have been utilized by law schools to bridge the gap between instruction and reality. … But of these, … it may be said that at their best they cannot hope to provide the objective, generalized understandings that are of the “essence” of the case.” Unlocking the Treasures of the Trial Courts, p. 3.