Major Francisco Fernandez Shares Law Enforcement Perspective on Ways to Improve Judicial Administration.

I'm extremely grateful to Major Francisco Fernandez of the Miami Police Department for taking the time to meet with me to share his law enforcement perspective on methods of improving judicial administration. 

One of the key responsibilities of judges under the Code of Judicial Conduct is diligent administration of their caseloads.  Another key requirement is that judges remain “patient, dignified, and courteous to litigants, jurors, witnesses, lawyers, and others with whom the judge deals in an official capacity . . . .”  I interpret these requirements as imposing on judges a responsibility, among other things, to administer their caseloads in a way that permits them to give each case the individualized attention it deserves, but also minimizes unnecessary waste of litigants’, attorneys’, witnesses’, and jurors’ time and/or money.

I don't know all the answers.  No one does.  But I will always seek and value perspective regarding how judicial administration methods affect those who appear before me and how I can improve.  Indeed, "[i]t is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.” George Eliot, Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life.