In 2004 federal courts made an announcement that federal courts are suffering severe budget cuts, and that may affect the length of time when issues are resolved in such federal courts, as well as will put a larger load on senior-status judges (whose legitimacy is questionable and was challenged by many legal scholars), see here and here.
Since 2004, funding of federal courts did not become better while population and caseloads continued to grow.
So, what kind of solution did federal courts, courts of limited jurisdiction where the only cases heard are cases between citizens of different states (diversity) and federal civil rights cases, invented to deal with the "mushrooming caseloads"?
A very easy solution:
(1) aggressively apply court-invented and unconstitutional "deferences", "abstentions" and "immunities" to dismiss as many civil rights cases as possible without allowing discovery to begin;
(2) sanction for "frivolous conduct" as many litigants and especially civil rights attorneys as possible, so that litigants and civil rights attorneys will be afraid to touch civil rights cases, for fear of having to pay thousands of dollars in legal fees to perpetrators of constitutional violations absolved by the courts from liability based on court-invented "deferences", "abstentions" and "immunities", unconstitutional judicial amendments to the Civil Rights Act enacted by the U.S. Congress;
(3) invent "court rules", such as costly and unnecessary "mandatory mediation" and "page limit" rules which drain litigants' scarce financial resources and force litigants and their counsel to reduce issues they want to raise to the bare minimum, which allows the courts to dismiss cases and claim that issues are not properly and fully presented and pled;
(4) stream appeals of civil rights litigants for a "speedy track", assign them to 70 to 80-year old senior-status judges who do not read the appeals, but instead rubber-stamp them "affirmed" by "summary orders", thus denying civil rights appellants equal protection of laws with other appellants, and denying civil rights appellants their right for a full appellate review and instead providing them a certiorari review, in contravention of appellate federal statutes.
In other words, to deal with budgetary problems and the limited number of judges who cannot physically handle the 600 to 800+ caseloads per judge, the only solution the courts invent is to continue to violate constitutional rights of civil rights litigants (for access to court, due process of law and impartial judicial review), the very same litigants whose constitutional rights have been already violated, that's why they are suing in the first place.
To break the law to fit into the budget is an answer of federal courts who are put in place to redress constitutional violations.
At the very same time, one thing I do not see reduced, despite budget cuts, is salaries of judges. Those appear to be only growing, and, with judges "assuming senior status" and new judges appointed, the budget is only mushrooming more.
So, the corps of judges continues to grow and continues to be paid ridiculous salaries to do what - toss cases on invented and unconstitutional basis to address budgetary cuts?
A book was published back in 1999, "The Federal Courts: Challenge and Reform" by judge Richard A. Posner, where the author squarely spotted the growing trend of sanctioning civil rights plaintiffs and tied it to the necessity to get rid of the growing caseloads.
So, the more the government grows, the more immunities it is given by courts, the more it violates people's constitutional rights.
The more the government violates people's constitutional rights, the more people sue.
The more people sue, the more the caseloads become on federal and state courts.
The more the caseloads become, while budgets of courts are cut, the more frustrated judges become since they are stressed by growing caseloads (without any fault of the litigants).
The more frustrated judges become - the more they sanction the victims of governmental misconduct, to punish them into silence.
And that trend, since 1999, got only worse. At this time, and this is my own experience as an attorney, courts stretch immunities, especially the absolute judicial immunity for malicious and corrupt acts, even where it was never declared (initially) to be - to judges' actions off the bench affecting their impartiality in litigation, and aggressively sanction litigants and their counsel simply for asking courts to help them redress violations of their constitutional rights.
While federal courts admitted that they are "losing fight to manage workload", attempts were made at the same time by the same courts, and continue into the present time, to win that time at the expense of the very people whose rights federal courts were created to protect.
In other words, cranky judges retaliate against victims of constitutional violations by members of the government because constitutional violations of the government become too numerous for the cranky judges to handle. There is no logic, or law underlying such attitude and judicial decisions driven by such attitude - but the trend in federal and state courts of sanctioning civil rights plaintiffs and their attorneys into silence continues with a vengeance.
With such an approach by courts - what kind of respect can courts expect from the public?
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