JT/DL: How Bad Courts Eat Good Policy

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How Bad Courts Eat Good Policy

Before the holiday break, I laid out what I find to be the 10 most wild facts about the American court system. Today, in this ongoing series capturing my thinking about courts and court innovation, I wanted to expand the scope about what it means to talk about courts, why they matter, and why they require immediate attention.

Nationally, court budgets were slashed during the ‘08 Housing Crisis, leading to nearly two decades of underfunding and understaffing. Today, only about two percent of state court budgets nationally go to capital improvements, technology, and innovation, putting much needed upgrades out of reach. This decades-long reality has left courts struggling to improve operations, meet their legal requirements, and keep up with the ever changing technological times. But what’s most important to remember is that the courts are not a closed environment where these outdated systems merely impact people facing a legal issue. A poorly functioning court can unintentionally eat good public policy set by other branches of government, including affordable housing, public safety, national security, and more.

Take the Washington, D.C. housing court for example.

Due to old policy and procedure, landlord-tenant cases take over a year to resolve. As the backlog grows beyond 6,000 cases, back rent goes unpaid and evictions are unresolved, which negatively impacts those facing eviction and the community at-large.

For individuals, resolving an eviction—usually in the landlord’s favor—kicks off a cycle of poverty as public eviction records cost people employment and housing opportunities, kids have to abruptly change schools, and the evicted family can even lose their belongings in the process.

But the individual’s experience is only half the story. This court backlog also exacerbates the District’s affordable housing crisis. By leaving cases unresolved, rent goes unpaid and units can’t be re-rented, putting as many as 20,000 affordable units on the brink of foreclosure. The knock-on effects are clear: a court struggling to keep up can hurt people and devour local policy goals, like affordable housing.

Similarly, court malfunction can damage public safety. In California, hundreds of people convicted of vehicular manslaughter kept and even renewed their drivers licenses because courts failed to inform the DMV of their convictions. This failure was due to human and technical errors. Even though courts know how to collect and share data, as required by state law, these solvable issues went unnoticed and people who should have had their licenses revoked were still driving recklessly, getting into accidents, and creating new victims.

Then there’s our national security.

Just last week, it became public that the U.S. Supreme Court was hacked multiple times allegedly by a man in Tennessee. But this news is only the most recent in a long string of cybersecurity failures from the federal courts. Last year, it was disclosed that Russia hacked the federal court’s data system. This hack imperiled ongoing criminal investigations, classified intelligence, and prized trade secrets at issue in civil cases. Like the two examples above, the federal courts’ inability to secure its vulnerabilities hurts more than the courts themselves. As U.S. Senator Ron Wyden bluntly put it, “The federal judiciary’s current approach to information technology is a severe threat to our national security.”

What’s confounding is that the vulnerabilities exploited during the Russian hack were known back in 2020, when the federal courts experienced another major breach. (Yes, this happens that often.) The federal court’s collective mismanagement of their data systems has led to hundreds of threatened witnesses and dozens more murdered. Still, only last spring did the federal courts institute multi-factor authentication for all users, a cybersecurity practice widely adopted in the mid-2000s and established as the standard for the federal government in 2015.

These are just three examples of a national problem well known in the court reform community. But executive and legislative branch leaders from around the country still watch their policy agendas walk into court-shaped buzz saws of outdated process and inoperable technology. More examples abound from criminal justice to economic mobility and poverty alleviation policy efforts. If you’re skeptical, I ask that you go watch your local debt docket for an hour to see how courts are too often a platform for wealth redistribution going the wrong direction.

This national problem will likely compound our trouble ahead. With economic insecurity growing, the collapse in federal support to state and local justice systems, and the passage of H.R. 1—putting onerous, new requirements on Medicaid—we can expect a new wave of economic hardship cases to crash into courts barely treading water. Eviction, debt, and family violence cases all spike during times of economic decline. And demand on Medicaid will increase at a time when denials will skyrocket. Simultaneously, courts will grapple with a flood of AI-generated cases. All of which will break brittle, outdated systems already struggling to keep up. And when that dam breaks, there’s no part of our society that won’t feel the impact.

It’s this pressing reality that’s on our minds as we develop a philanthropic fund to innovate court capacity. Novel approaches to AI, improved data systems, software upgrades, staff training, procurement, and other interventions can help bolster these critical institutions. We aim to move courts from a forgotten periphery to an integral and co-equal branch of government when contemplating policy implementation. By doing so, we will increase support for the courts and improve their ability to serve the public, while still maintaining their independence. In the coming dispatches of this series, I’ll talk about ideas we have to set the courts moving in that direction.

Regardless of the intervention, however, the takeaway is this: court innovation isn’t just for the courts, it’s for the benefit of us all.

News

The U.S. Supreme Court got hacked … 25 times … in two months … by the same guy. (Above the Law)

Inside ICE’s tool to monitor phones in entire neighborhoods. (404 Media)

From record clearance to takeoff, what happens when people learn they’re free? (LinkedIn) (h/t Colleen V. Chien)

The role of AI and predictive policing in crime prevention. (Rochester Institute of Technology)

AI-powered police cameras face pushback from Wisconsin communities. (Wisconsin Public Radio) (h/t Brittany Suszan)

What do police officers really think about body cameras? (A&E) (h/t Brittany Suszan)

Do judges actually read search warrants? (A2J Lab)

Data politics: How the French legal profession renegotiated judicial transparency. (Law & Social Inquiry)

Safeguarding human rights and judicial independence in the age of algorithmic justice. (UNESCO)

Expert predictions on what’s at stake in AI policy in 2026. (Tech Policy Press)

Events

The Legal Services Corporation’s Innovations in Technology Conference is Jan. 28-30. (LSC)

Colorado Law is hosting a conference on asymmetries in communication tech, Feb. 1-2. (UCB)

Suffolk Law is hosting LIT Con April 13. (SLS)

RightsCon is May 5-8 in Zambia. (RC)

Jobs & Opportunities

The A2J Network is accepting submissions for its conference. (A2JN)

The Brennan Center has paid and internship opportunities, including in justice reform. (BC) (h/t Eduardo Gonzalez)

Code for America has multiple openings. (CfA) (h/t Russ Finkelstein)

[New] Council for Court Excellence needs early career fellows. (CCE)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is hiring legal interns. (EFF)

The Gates Foundation needs a deputy director for its AI and Data Enablement Hub. (GF)

Ideas42 needs an advocacy director to end missed court dates. (I42)

[New] The Indiana Supreme Court needs a data scientist. (ISC)

The Institute for Law and AI has multiple openings. (ILAI)

The Kansas Courts need someone to run their language access program. (KC)

Lambda Legal needs a legal project manager. (LL)

The MacArthur Foundation needs a director of AI and opportunity. (MF)

The Mozilla Foundation is accepting nominations for fellows. (MF)

Oregon Law Help needs a content creator. (OSB)

The Privacy Law Scholars Conference is accepting paper submissions. (PLSC)

Wired needs a senior politics reporter. (W)