Supreme Courts Under Pressure: Controlling Caseload in the Administration of Civil Justice

Increasing the capacity of the court to handle larger numbers of cases may result in the court being unable to adequately fulfil its public function, since large numbers of court decisions make it difficult to guarantee the uniformity of the law and its development. Therefore, a balanced approach is needed to safeguard capacity and quality. As shown by the contributions gathered here, the nature of reform in this area is not the same everywhere. There are a variety of reasons for this heterogeneity, ranging from different understandings of the caseload problem itself, local conceptions regarding the purpose of the Supreme Court, and strong entitlements concerning the right to appeal to budgetary restrictions and extremely rigid legislation. The book also shows that the implementation of similar solutions to case overload, such as access filters, may have different effects in different jurisdictions. The conclusion might well be that the problem of overburdened courts is multifactorial and context-dependent, and that easy, one-size-fits-all solutions are hard to find and perhaps even harder to implement.