Chief Justice Burger and the National Center for State Court Center for State Courts

by Paul Reardon

One of the greatest contributions of the retiring Chief Justice has been his unremitting zeal in seeking to strengthen the state courts. It is in these courts that well over ninety-five percent of all litigation, criminal and civil, is tried. While the great bulk of the civil cases to be found in that percentage are small cases –not all of them are. Certainly the most serious criminal cases have their resolution largely in the state courts. Thus, these are the courts where the American people touch the law in by far the largest numbers. Their state of health, their efficiency, their strength, their performance is of prime importance. The quality of their judges and attendant personnel determines to what extent state and federal constitutional guarantees of fair trial are being complied with by them.

The twentieth century has been witness to the efforts of many competent and hard working individuals seeking to improve the delivery of justice in the state courts. Quite a number of them, now deceased, who played major roles in bettering state judicial administration, were known principally to those with whom they worked in their own states or in burgeoning national cooperative efforts. There are four names, however, which must be remembered when one considers just who it was who over the last eight decades sought to provide muscle to the state tribunals.

The first of these was Roscoe Pound. In his far reaching 1906 address–which needs no further advertising here–he pointed out that "a . . . perennial source of popular dissatisfaction with the administration of justice may be found in the popular assumption that the administration of justice is an easy task to which anyone is competent?"[1] No one had done much thinking about that before. What he detected as a young lawyer he later tackled as a law school dean, in doing what he could to remedy some .of the ills to which he had earlier called attention.

The second was Arthur T Vanderbilt, lawyer, teacher of law and Chief Justice of New Jersey. Dean Wigmore had labeled the 1906 Pound speech "the spark that kindled the white flame of progress?"[2] Vanderbilt, in his work of revamping and modernizing judicial administration in New Jersey, demonstrated that many of the problems to which Pound had alluded years before could be isolated and overcome. Beyond that, he was the catalyst in first bringing together the chief justices of the states and territories at St. Louis in 1949. There the Conference of State Chief Justices was born, an organization--which has grown in strength and prestige since, all to the great benefit of the state court system.

The third was Justice Tom C. Clark. While on the United States Supreme Court he was the main force in the creation of the National Conference of State Trial Judges in 1957 and later the Conference of State Appellate Judges. His major contribution, however, came in 1971 when the newly elected Governor of Virginia, now the President of the Supreme Court Historical Society, Linwood Holton, assisted by Dr. William Swindler, Professor of Law at William and Mary, asked Justice Clark to lead a national conference on the judiciary. As Chairman of that conference he brought to it the President of the United States, the Chief Justice and the Attorney General, and hundreds of other state judicial and legal officials. Seven years later when a new building, home of the National Center for State Courts, was being dedicated in Williamsburg, Chief Justice Burger said, "No dedication of this building would be complete without recalling the remarkable contributions of my late colleague, our beloved friend, the late Justice Tom C. Clark, not simply to the National Center but to the causes of justice. His imprint can be found on virtually every important improvement in justice in the last 15 years."[3]

We thus come to the fourth individual, Warren E. Burger, who in the latter years of this century (1) has been principal in tying together concepts for improvement in state courts earlier voiced and worked upon by Pound, Vanderbilt, Clark and others and (2) through his unflagging interest and support of a states court center has given those courts both incentive and hope.

Chief Justice Burger's interest in state courts, their problems and their needs, was not of recent origin. Shortly after his appointment, in a December 1970 interview with US News and World Report in answer to a question "Do you need a central agency to serve all the states?" he replied "Yes, definitely–a clearinghouse of information–very important information, available to all courts. We need some kind of national judicial center?"[4] He then evinced recognition of the fact that while various echelons of state judicial systems were separately corresponding in an exchange of ideas on procedures and operation, no strong central body was as yet in being to study each of these systems as an entity. He later employed the 1971 National Conference of the Judiciary, to which reference has already been made, to express his ideas for progressive change in the following language:

"The time has come, and I submit it is here and now at this Conference to make the initial decision and bring into being some kind of national clearinghouse or center to serve the states and to cooperate with all the agencies seeking to improve justice at every level. The need is great and the time is now, and I hope the conference will consider creating a working committee before you adjourn. I know that you will do many important things while you are here to the benefit of our common problems, but if you do no more than launch the much-needed service agency to the state courts, your time and attendance here would be justified.[5]

Without in any way attempting to dictate the form of organization of the center he contemplated, he yet pointed the way for the creation of the National Center for State Courts. His suggestions received the hearty endorsement of the President of the United States speaking to the Conference. A steering committee went to work and by resolution unanimously adopted before its adjournment, the Conference endorsed the Burger proposal and requested "the Executive Council of the Conference of Chief Justices to carry this resolution into effect within a period not to exceed ninety days."[6] Articles of Incorporation prepared by the Steering Committee were signed at a luncheon given by the Chief Justice at the Supreme Court on June 15, 1971. Thereafter, the Incorporators met on August 14, 1971 at the 1749 Courthouse in Plymouth, Massachusetts where John Adams had argued cases on circuit in early days, and elected the first directors of the Center, all state judges. In his remarks at Williamsburg in March 1971, the Chief Justice had offered the full cooperation of the facilities of the Federal Judicial Center and the Administration Office of the United States Court at the same time stating that "bearing in mind my own concepts of federalism I will participate only when you ask me to do."[7] Since then his helpful interest in this young and somewhat uncertain organization at its beginning has never flagged nor waned. Year by year, without being obtrusive, he has backed and assisted the growth and work of the Center. Its financing, doubtful at first, was aided greatly by grants from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration and by the creation of a committee of the nation's business leaders, chaired originally by George A. Stinson, Chief Executive of National Steel and later in succession by other heads of national corporations. Every year the annual meeting of this important adjunct to the Center has been addressed by the Chief Justice. Those who labored to build and make the Center strong will never forget the innumerable and largely unknown acts of assistance which came from the hands of the Chief Justice.

And thus it was that in March 1978 a Second National Conference of the Judiciary was held again at Williamsburg to dedicate a new headquarters building, again attended by some 500 judicial leaders including the Chief Justices of all the major English speaking countries and all the states and territories. In this most attractive and practical building, at the ground breaking for which the Chief Justice attended and spoke, has since been developed a host of projects designed to streamline state court systems and update their operations. The good work which has come from the Center headquarters and its satellite offices on the east and west coasts and in Washington has been of incalculable benefit to the state courts. In his "Year-end Report on the Judiciary" released on December 28, 1981, Chief Justice Burger stated that the Center "is one of the most important developments in the administration of justice in this century." To those who have kept close tabs on the state courts since the days of Arthur Vanderbilt, this was no overstatement. The states themselves, and large segments of the bar, aided by responsible business leaders and many foundations, in realization of the worth of the Center, have proceeded to give it a much more solid financial base and its present potential for future good is quite impossible of measurement.

Noting the sum total of what he had done for the state courts over the years, the Conference of State Chief Justices at its 38th annual meeting in Omaha on August 7,1986 passed a resolution extending "in warm fashion its appreciation and admiration for Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, the Chief Justice of the United States, who has done more to improve the administration of justice in the state courts of this country than all of his predecessors combined."

The language of this resolution is not over generous in acknowledging the debt which state court justice owes Warren E. Burger. It is often overlooked that the draftsmen of all American constitutions had much in mind that the purest principles of the law of which we are heirs required more than mere statement.

That these constitutional principles should be alive, that justice in accord with them should be delivered fairly and promptly to the citizens of the states, was of major concern to those who wrote our state and federal constitutions. Chief Justice Burger during his tenure has not only thought about that fact, and talked about it, but for all the years of his tenure in the high office which he held, as his other duties permitted, and as Chief Justice of all the United States, he did something about it. Without his constant interest and help it is doubtful that the National Center could have survived and commenced to prosper. With that interest and help the National Center for State Courts is alive and well and the states and their people are better for it and for him.

Endnotes

1. 46 J. Am. Jud. Soc. 3 p. 58 (August 1962).
2. 20 J. Am. Jud Soc. 176 (1937).
3. State Courts -- A Blue Print for the Future Proceedings of Second National Conference on the Judiciary--National Center for State Courts--Aug. 1978, p. 288.
4. U.S. News and World Report, Dec. 14, 1970, p. 42.
5. National Conference on the Judiciary, March 1970, West Pub. Co. p. 20.
6. Id. at 261
7. Id. at 21.