More Public Trust in Courts Needed to Fight Threats to Judges

Better solutions are needed to prevent harassment and threats against Supreme Court justices, state and federal judges, and their families.

While the Supreme Court Police Parity Act and the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act were passed to provide greater security for Supreme Court justices and federal judges, laws alone won’t stem harassment, threats, and attacks.

Congress must also adequately fund the US Marshals Service to ensure it has resources to protect the federal judiciary. And state legislatures must enact legislation to increase security for state judges, who aren’t protected by these federal laws.

READ MORE: US Marshals’ Blind Spots Leave Judges Vulnerable to Threats

It is important to remember that most of the American public has little contact with the judicial system. Decline in civic and US history education in elementary and secondary schools has left a large portion of the public uninformed about the judiciary and how it functions. Meanwhile, social media is flooded with inaccurate news about our courts and judges’ work.

When elected officials and the legal community don’t condemn and correct unjustified public attacks against the judiciary, the public sees a one-sided and inaccurate picture of judges—who can’t speak out on their own behalf.

Further, judges would likely face fewer security threats if the public’s overall confidence in them and the judicial system increased. While there are no simple solutions to this complex problem, steps can be taken to help restore public confidence.

First, civics education must improve. Organizations have developed excellent educational materials that explain how our judicial system works. These need to be put to use in schools and community organizations, not just through rote memorization but also through experiential opportunities for students to engage with courts in positive ways. Further, civics education needs to reach people where they are, including through the use of popular social media platforms.

A hallmark of a well-functioning judicial system is public access to resolve disputes. But increasingly, access to our courts is out of reach for many in the US. The World Justice Project’s 2023 Rule of Law Index ranked the US 115th out of 142 countries on accessibility and affordability of civil justice. The public can hardly be blamed for lacking confidence in a system that is beyond the reach of so many.

To address this problem, policymakers should leverage emerging technology such as artificial intelligence. AI software platforms, including those using generative AI, may prove very helpful in expanding access to courts.

Some states are getting creative to meet the need for legal aid. Utah established innovative “regulatory sandboxes” under the supervision of the courts to ensure “consumers have access to [a] well-developed, high-quality, innovative, affordable, and competitive market for legal services” for end of life planning, business-related matters, family law, education, real estate, domestic violence, bankruptcy, and education. Programs such as these could be expanded to all state courts and the federal courts to provide underserved members of the public significantly greater access to the courts.

How individual judges and courts interact with the public can also greatly affect perception of the judicial system’s fairness as a whole. My own experience as a judge vividly taught me that when judges treat all who come into their courtrooms with courtesy and professionalism, litigants are more likely to feel they have been treated fairly.

To further improve the experience for litigants, courts and the clerks’ offices can do much to modernize their websites, tackle backlogs, and ensure their interactions with litigants and the public are respectful. The health-care system has made remarkable advances in the past decade by improving electronic access to information and conducting surveys to measure patient satisfaction. State and federal courts should follow this example.

Public faith in and respect for the judicial system will falter if judges are perceived as biased or unethical. Concerns about the absence of an ethics code applicable to the Supreme Court were widely reported this year. The Supreme Court’s adoption in November of a detailed code of conduct for the justices was a vitally important step toward enhancing public confidence in the integrity of the court. Still, the public will have to believe that the court is complying with the new voluntary ethics code if it is to succeed in changing public opinion.

Improving security for judges and responding to unfair personal attacks and threats are vital to ensuring judicial independence, which has been the hallmark of the American judiciary since the nation’s founding. But meaningful improvement in judicial security can’t be achieved if the judicial system can’t win public confidence.

Real work is needed to improve judicial security and trust in the judiciary, which are symbiotically related. Legislators, lawyers, judges, and courts all must do their part if we are to reverse these unacceptable trends.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg Tax, or its owners.

Author Information

Paul Grimm is professor of law and director of the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School. From 2012 to 2022 he was a district judge of the US District Court for the District of Maryland.

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