COURTS AND GOVERNMENT SHUT DOWN

October 1, 2013,

The Courts and the Shutdown

By DOROTHY J. SAMUELS, NYT

The opening of a new Supreme Court term on the statutorily prescribed first Monday in October is always surrounded by a fair amount of drama having to do with the momentous legal issue the justices will be taking up. The government shutdown has imbued the start of the 2013-2014 term this coming Monday, Oct. 7, with a different sort of suspense.

A notice posted on the Supreme Court’s website says the court “will continue to conduct its normal operations” through this Friday. It is silent about what will happen if the “lapse of appropriations,” as the notice delicately describes the madness, continues beyond that. The court will be announcing its plans a week at a time.

It is expected, though, that the term’s first oral arguments will proceed as scheduled, shutdown or no, and that the court will conduct business as usual, much as it did during the Clinton-era shutdowns. How long Supreme Court operations could remain unharmed if the shutdown drags on is unclear.

For lower federal courts, a prolonged shutdown could be disastrous. Sufficient reserve funds are on hand for normal court operations for just 10 business days, through Oct. 15, according to a memo recently circulated by Judge John Bates, director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.

Once those funds are depleted, there would need to be extensive furloughing of staff, and reductions in probation, pretrial and courthouse security services to comply with the federal Anti-Deficiency Act, which allows only “essential work” to continue during a government shutdown. Coming on top of the devastation to the nation’s court system caused by the maniacal across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration, the damage to American justice would be compounded and hard to recover from once the impasse is over.  >> THE COURTS & SHUT DOWN <<CLICK

LET US ALL GET ON OUR KNEES AND PRAY THE GOVERNMENT SHUT-DOWN IS GOING TO TAKE ALL THE KITTY LITTER OUT AND THROW THE NASTY ROCA POOPS INTO THE SEWERS