Chief Justice Roberts praises how the country’s courts have responded to the pandemic

State and federal courts have responded swiftly to the coronavirus pandemic, adapting courthouses to conduct trials and finding the public ready to serve on jury duty, Chief Justice John Roberts said in his annual year-end message on Thursday on the judiciary.

“Judges across the country are reporting that where jury trials have resumed, responses to jury summons have met or exceeded their high hopes for the public’s willingness to participate in the legal system in these very difficult times,” Roberts said.

The pandemic forced courthouses across the country to close in March, but in April, Roberts said, judges “guided critical court functions from their home offices – or kitchen tables” and learned “quickly or less finally ”to use audio and video conferences. tools.

The United States Supreme Court was among the adopters, canceling spring court sittings and instead hearing argument by conference call for the first time, a practice that continued when the court’s new term began. in October.

To accommodate jury trials, trial courts reconfigured spaces, rearranged large courtrooms to maintain social distancing, and installed plexiglass to keep participants physically separate. Judges in Michigan and Florida have held drive-through naturalization ceremonies, and courts in Iowa and Minnesota have moved theirs outside, he said.

Ordinary civil cases were down 10% for the year, and 25% fewer defendants were charged with immigration-related offenses “largely in response to a 70% reduction in defendants charged with irregular entry, ”according to his report.

Robert noted part of the story of the High Court’s responses to epidemics, claiming that the first Chief Justice of the United States, John Jay, had to adjourn the young Supreme Court from its seat in Philadelphia in 1793 due to the yellow fever epidemic that killed 5,000 of the city’s 50,000. residents. “President Washington himself fell ill with a severe case of the flu” three years earlier, according to the report.

Sessions of the Supreme Court were again canceled in 1918 during the Spanish flu epidemic, the last time the court’s work was interrupted until the Covid-19 pandemic.