167,504 to 759. It sounds like a lopsided cricket score (those matches go on forever!), but it’s really the number of proceedings filed in Rhode Island state courts versus the Rhode Island federal court in 2016, the most recent year for comparable statistics. Are the numbers really this skewed? Let’s take a closer look.
Before we get there, the Rhode Island federal court’s statistics for 2004-2017 distributed at the last federal bench/bar committee meeting reveal some interest trends year over year. Starting with the civil docket, the federal court handled 585 cases overall and 530 “core” cases in 2017. The federal court defines “core” civil cases as excluding multi-district litigation (where lots of cases from other districts get transferred to Rhode Island for pretrial), other special cases like the Station Fire case that have lots of individual filers, and civil cases with prisoners as plaintiffs. The big spike in non-core cases from 2008 to 2010 is likely the result of mortgage foreclosure cases (so-called “MERS” cases) that flooded the federal docket. The federal court’s numbers for civil cases in 2017 are fairly consistent with the last few years, as reflected in the federal court’s statistical chart:
The criminal docket in Rhode Island’s federal court shows an upward tick after the gradual downward slide from the previous highs in 2010 and 2011. The new administration’s focus on immigration-related crimes, along with a few large wiretap cases that happen at unpredictable times, appear to be partially responsible for the higher numbers in 2017. The United States Attorney’s office filed 109 new criminal cases in 2017. As of 2016, the United States Attorney’s office had 15 attorneys devoted to criminal matters, so this works out to about 7 cases per attorney. By comparison, there are three federal public defenders in Rhode Island, although they do not represent all of the 141 criminal defendants prosecuted in Rhode Island in 2017. Some defendants can afford to hire private attorneys, and in other cases, the federal public defender is conflicted out and a CJA panel attorney represents the indigent defendant.
The vanishing civil jury trial has held steady over the last few years in federal court. For most of the years in the chart below, the federal court had three active judges and at least one senior judge. This works out to about one or two civil trials a year per judge. The number of criminal trials has plummeted from around 10 per year to about 3 per year.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the federal court data is the comparison it allows to Rhode Island state courts. The most recent statistics for the state courts appear in the 2016 Annual Report for the Rhode Island Judiciary. In 2016, the state courts docketed 167,504 new proceedings; while the federal court handled 664 civil cases and 95 criminal cases, for a total of 759 filings. This means the state courts saw 22,000% more filings than the federal court. I’m not a statistician, but that level of deviation probably has statistical significance.
But is the workload really that disparate in the state and federal systems? The number of filings across the state courts is heavily weighted towards the Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal, which accounted for 49% of all filings in state court in 2016. Here are the numbers by type of state court and number of authorized judicial officers per court (not counting magistrates, except for the Traffic Tribunal):
- Supreme Court (Appellate): 358 filings / 5 Justices; 72 filings per judicial officer.
- Superior Court: 13,739 filings / 22 Justices; 625 filings per judicial officer.
- Family Court: 14,766 filings / 12 Justices; 1,231 filings per judicial officer.
- District Court: 56,455 filings / 14 Judges; 4,033 filings per judicial officer.
- Workers’ Compensation Court: 7,616 filings / 10 Judges; 762 filings per judicial officer.
- Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal: 81,549 filings / 8 Judges and Magistrates; 10,194 filings per judicial officer!
There are lots of ways to slice these numbers. The state district court, for example, handles many more cases per judge than the federal court. Anyone who walks into Sixth Division in the morning will encounter many more litigants than those arriving at the federal courthouse.
The most analogous court in the state system to the federal court is probably the Superior Court. The judges on the Superior Court and the federal district court are trial judges, they handle civil and criminal matters, and they hear a wide variety of complex cases. By this measure, there are 3 authorized judgeships in federal court (although only two sitting judges, with one vacancy), for a total of 253 filings per judicial officer. This is fewer than the 653 filings per judicial officer in Superior Court, but not dramatically lower.
The comparison of federal court to the Superior Court is not entirely apples to apples. It’s unclear if the federal statistics include literally all filings like the state court numbers. One aspect of federal court is the Central Violations Bureau calendar, which handles the equivalent of traffic tickets and other low-level violations that occur on federal land. It happens twice a month and is the rough equivalent of small-claims or traffic court. It’s doubtful the federal statistics include these types of cases.
Also, the workflow of the Superior Court is set up differently from the federal court, so a filings-per-judicial-officer is not really the same in the federal and state systems. The federal district judges are assigned randomly when a case is filed, and the same judge handles it from cradle to grave. In the federal system, a per-judge filing rate of 253 cases means that the judge is likely to see 253 cases. In the state system, by contrast, some Superior Court judges handle pre-trial matters and others handle civil or criminal trials, at least in Providence County. Since so few cases actually proceed to trial, this means that the judges handling pre-trial matters will see many more cases in Superior Court than the judges who focus on trials. While the Superior Court filing-to-judge ratio is 653, as a practical matter, the pre-trial judges see many more cases. Or, at least, that’s the way it seems at the pre-trial motion calendar, where one hearing can have hundred(s) of cases on the docket. Another layer that makes comparison difficult is that the Superior Court’s caseload is distributed across four courthouses, with the Providence courthouse bearing the brunt of the filings. Based on the existing data, it’s hard to know if a Superior Court trial judge in Providence (who is one of many trial judges in Providence) will encounter more trials than a Superior Court judge sitting in Kent County, where fewer judges sit.
Another notable facet of the Superior Court statistics is the sheer number of criminal filings. In 2016, the Attorney General’s office, along with de-novo criminal appeals from state district court, accounted for 5,352 filings in Superior Court. The U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecuted 95 cases in 2016. I know one state prosecutor who has over 200 open cases, which is probably more than all Assistant United States Attorneys combined in the federal system.
A remarkable nugget in the state court’s statistics is the large number of cases dismissed for lack of prosecution. In 2016, the Superior Court disposed of 9,184 civil cases. Of these, the Superior Court dismissed 3,567 cases for lack of activity after five years — usually through a show cause order for lack of prosecution. This translates into the surprising statistic that 39% of all Superior Court civil cases that reached a disposition in 2016 were dismissed for inactivity. This shows the significant impact that scheduling orders have on cases. In state court, there are no mandatory scheduling orders. Cases can sit idle for years before resurrection back to active status. The federal courts issue mandatory case management orders that include deadlines for discovery, and cases move along relatively quickly. Very few federal cases (if any), are dismissed for lack of prosecution.
Without more data, it’s hard to tell just how much of a heavier workload exists in the state courts than the federal court. It’s not as skewed as 167,504 to 759 suggests. Some Superior Court trial judges, for example, probably handle a smaller number of cases comparable to the federal court. But overall, the reasonable conclusion is that the state courts handle orders-of-magnitude more cases than the federal court.
Just like in economics — the study of the allocation of scarce resources — more cases per judge means less time to focus on each case. Chalk it up to the Superior Court’s life in the fast lane as a court of general jurisdiction, Chase v. Bouchard, 671 A.2d 794, 796 (R.I. 1996), compared to the federal judge’s role as a court of limited jurisdiction. Ins. Brokers W., Inc. v. Liquid Outcome, LLC, 241 F. Supp. 3d 339, 342 (D.R.I. 2017).