Judge shortages are leading to judicial backlogs nationwide.

Judge vacancies In both New York and Vermont, judge vacancies are chief among the reasons for the states’ court backlogs. In September, the New York City Bar Association  calling on the state legislature to work toward repealing the state’s constitutionally prescribed cap on the number of judges that can be elected to the state’s supreme courts. The state has one supreme court per county, totaling 62 across the state. The cap, originally enacted in 1846, limits the number of state supreme court judges to one for every 50,000 residents of a judicial district. New York state has nearly 120,000 pending cases, according to the most recent  available. In 2022, the state’s court system resolved more than 2.1 million cases, according to its The New York State Unified Court System did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the status of the state’s backlog or efforts to reduce it. Judges on other lower courts are tasked with stepping in when there are vacancies on state supreme courts, even if they were not initially elected for such roles, said Elizabeth Kocienda, the New York City Bar Association’s director of advocacy. This practice leads to backlogs in criminal, civil and family law cases, as lower court judges must handle cases outside their usual purview. And this routine reassignment contributes to vacancies on the lower courts, exacerbating the existing backlog, Kocienda said. “You end up with this mishmash of judges that are sitting on the supreme court with varying levels of experience, varying levels of all different practice areas,” Kocienda said. “They weren’t necessarily intended for that court, so it just creates a lot of downstream problems in other areas.” A  to increase the number of state supreme court judges is already in committee in both the New York Assembly and the Senate. In December, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a  to increase the number of state supreme court judges in three districts. The law also raises the number of judges serving on other courts, including family courts in New York City. Hochul also has expressed support for repealing the cap on the number of supreme court judges in the state, including a  for the measure in her State of the State agenda released earlier this month. The Vermont Judiciary, which encompasses the state’s entire court system, faced judge shortages at different times over the past year, leading to the reassignment of judges from their regular dockets to cover cases in other areas. This reshuffling prevented them from presiding over their own cases simultaneously, resulting in a reduction in scheduled hearings and a slowdown in case processing across both courts, according to Teri Corsones, Vermont’s court administrator. As of Jan. 16, there were over 35,500 pending cases statewide, according to data from the Vermont Judiciary. About 42%, or 15,294 of those pending cases, are criminal cases. That’s double the amount of pending criminal cases pre-pandemic. While five vacant judge positions were filled in November, the state still has one judicial vacancy and one magistrate vacancy. “We’ve been able to make slow but steady progress in addressing the backlog since resuming fully open courts, but greater progress has been hampered by the number of judge vacancies,” Corsones wrote in an email to Stateline. Vermont’s pretrial detainee population increased about 10% between 2019 and 2023, which means hundreds of people have languished in the state’s correctional facilities without being convicted of a crime, according to Nick Deml, the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Corrections. “It’s gonna take multiple lines of effort, attacking different parts of this problem,” Deml said. “There’s not going to be one silver bullet that solves the backlog.” Democratic state Rep. William Notte introduced a bill that would combine a person’s multiple misdemeanor theft charges into a single felony charge, which aims to reduce the time spent in court. Notte, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, said the committee also plans to explore other measures designed to reduce the state’s backlog, such as expanding drug court statewide and streamlining the process for presenting judicial nominees to the governor. The Vermont Judiciary asked the legislature to fund two additional judge positions and 10 judicial assistants, Corsones wrote in an email. The judiciary is also “actively exploring” a funding request for a third additional judge position.