Data released by the Administrative Office of the US Courts on Tuesday show that the number of cases filed in federal courts last year fell from 295,310 in 2014 to 279,036 in fiscal-2015. The number of pending civil cases in the courts inched up just 1 per cent to 341,813, though the judicial backlog is still 28 per cent larger than it was five years ago. Though the number of filed cases is down, the number of pending cases that been around for longer than three years grew 14 per cent last year to 34,244 cases.
The bulk of the increase in stagnating cases is down to product liability lawsuits with roots in the pharmaceutical and health care industries. The number of three-year-plus lawsuits of this kind has shot up from just 19 at the end of fiscal-2014 to a staggering 2,638 cases by the end of the last financial year.
Political shifts in the appointment of federal judges have almost certainly contributed to the backlog. Since the Republican party took control of the US Senate in 2015, the number of judicial vacancies in both the federal courts and the federal courts of appeal has been slowly climbing, now sitting at 73 empty seats for the former and 64 empty seats for the latter.
Republican senators have capitalised on a rule requiring only a simple majority in the Senate to cut off debate on a federal judicial nominee. The lower threshold was introduced under Democratic Senate leadership, which subsequently reduced the number of vacancies in the federal courts from 92 to 44 in 2014.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Email your news and story ideas to: [email protected]
