Wednesday, September 25, 1974
15
Judge praises court consolidation
By STEVE FRY City Reporter
A Kansas citizen committee's recommendation to unify the local, county and state courts into local district courts is a splendid idea, Judge James W. Paddock, 7th Judicial District Court, Division II, said recently.
Under the recommendations of the Kansas Judicial Study Advisory Committee, the probate, juvenile, county, judge, city, common pleas and municipal courts would be eliminated and their powers given to a single court, the district court.
The Kansas Supreme Court would generally supervise the unified court system. An intermediate appellate court, the Kansas Court of Appeals, would be created to "dispose of many cases now clogging the supreme court's docket," the
advisory committee's report recommended.
The court unification should be made "to better utilize the judicial manpower in the state, to divide the work more evenly among the present judges and eliminate the confusion of having all these various courts," Paddock said.
The Kansas Legislature will have to pass a law to bring about the court unification plan, he said. Paddock said he didn't have enough time to make such a occur, but he hoped it would be soon.
The proposed district court would have judges and district magistrates judge, and district magistrates judge.
The present district judges would continue being district judges. Probate, county, juvenile and magistrate judges would be titled as associate judges.
A district administrative judge would assign the cases to the various judges. The administrative judge would be the judge with the longest service record.
Municipal judges would become district magistrate judges, Paddock said.
The number of judges would stay the same as now, Paddock said. He said he hoped that the non-lawyer judges would be made available to judges in district and associate district court judges.
Paddock said he didn't think the changeover from the present court system to the unified system would be costly. In fact, the new system would save money in record keeping and bookkeeping costs, he said.
Under the new system, all judges in the district court could theoretically handle all sorts of cases, he said. One method of judge selection to handle the individual cases
would be to give judges with expertise in an area the cases involved in that area.
The intermediate appellate court in the proposed unified court system would consist of a chief judge and six associate judges, according to the committee report. The principal offices would be located in Topkai, with would sit in tanks of three to four feet.
The new system would use a non-partisan method to select the district judges in order to avoid the possibility of mixing politics in the courts, Paddock said.
A nominating committee composed of lawyers chosen by the district's bar commission would select the choices for district judge, he said.
The committee's choices would be sent to the governor for him to select for the public library.
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