Several of Judicial Conference's
Long
Range Planning Goals
Emerge in Proposed Legislation
The Proposed Long Range Plan for the
Federal Courts, which was produced by the Long Range
Planning Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United
States in late 1994, detailed 98 recommendations, including
proposals to eliminate some diversity-of-citizenship cases
from the federal courts, expand fees for filings and other
uses of the courts, and experiment with a "loser pays" regime.
(See "Planning for the Federal Courts: What Impact on
the States?" CIVIL JUSTICE DIGEST, Winter 1995, and box
at page 5 of this issue.)
To date, three of the Proposed Plan's
concepts have appeared in pending federal legislation.
Filing Fees, Diversity Jurisdiction
At the request of the Administrative Office
of the United States Courts, Utah Senator Orin Hatch has
introduced legislation in the U. S. Senate (S. 1101) which, if
passed, would implement some of the Proposed Plan's
proposals on diversity jurisdiction (Recommendation 5) and
user fees (Recommendation 87). A similar bill, H.R. 1989, has
been introduced in the House of Representatives.
Section 202 of S. 1101 would establish a user
fee system for the federal courts. It would increase civil
action filing fees from $120 to $150, allowing the first $90
to be deposited into a fund to offset appropriated funds for
court maintenance and operations.
Section 304 would eliminate
diversity-of-citizenship jurisdiction of cases with any
in-state plaintiff but would not limit defendants' right to
remove state cases to federal court. Section 309 would
increase the "amount in controversy" requirement for diversity
cases from $50,000 to $75,000, and index future increases to
the Consumer Price Index. Such an increase might be expected
to curtail the diversity caseload somewhat. Past increases in
the amount-in-controversy requirement (e.g., the 1958
increase to $10,000 and the 1989 increase to $50,000) were
followed by a decrease or leveling-off in filing of diversity
cases.
The chairs of three Judicial Conference
subcommittees testified in support of S. 1101 at a hearing of
the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on
Administrative Oversight and the Courts on October 24, 1995,
but at the time of publication of this issue, no votes had
been taken on the bill. In comments in a recent issue of
The Third Branch (the newsletter of the Administrative
Office of the United States Courts), Senator Hatch explained
that he introduced S. 1101 "`by request'... so that Congress
could have the Judiciary's legislative suggestions on record
as proposed." He made no predictions on the bill's prospects.
Return
to Contents
