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operates by receiving requests from courts, then giving consideration to the facts and detetermining whether or not it will request a deferment of the local board. I will say that that committee exercises its judgment on those requests. It grants, by no means, all of the requests that come to it from the courts.

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES IN ARMED SERVICES

In my annual report for 1943 I indicated the number of persons from various branches of the courts' service who were in the armed services. The proportion naturally varied according to the character of the service. For instance, in the clerks' offices, in which a considerable part of the personnel consists of women, the proportion in the service was only 5 percent at the end of 1943. The proportion of law clerks to judges, then in the service, was 17 percent. The proportion of probation officers then in the service was 17 percent, and the proportion of members of the staff of the administrative office, 16 percent.

I have some later figures in reference to two branches of the service to which I have referred. One is the probation service.

Mr. O'NEAL. Will you just insert those in the record, Mr. Chandler? Mr. CHANDLER. Very well. I take some pride, sir, if I may, in saying that in the administrative office there are at the present time, in a staff which fluctuates around 100, being sometimes 2 or 3 below, sometimes 2 or 3 above, depending on temporary employees-there are 21 men and 1 woman, who is a lieutenant in the Women's Army Corps, in the armed services.

DEATH IN THE SERVICE OF A FORMER EMPLOYEE

I am very sorry to say that one member of our staff was killed in action, in the fighting over the Mediterranean Sea. He was a member of the crew of a bombing plane. That happened last spring. Mr. O'NEIL. I think his name might be put in the record.

Mr. CHANDLER. His name was Alexis Rohan. If I may stop for just a minute, I will say that Alexis was a lad who came to us in his early twenties. Starting at the bottom as a messenger in March 1940, he had received two promotions and worked up to the position of a clerk in the duplicating section when he entered the armed services. in January 1942. He showed industry, a willing spirit and a disposition to help. That made him one of the most popular of our employees. It was a very real grief, I can assure you, to all of us, when Alexis was shot down.

PROPORTION OF TOTAL EMPLOYEES IN ARMED SERVICES

It does not tell quite the whole story, to say that we have 22 persons in the armed services out of a staff of 100, because the number of men in the administrative office is only 43. You can see that the proportion of men in the services is close to one-half. Also among the men who have gone, are some holding leading and responsible positions. in our office. Examples are the Chief and Assistant Chief of the Probation Division. Mr. Grout is here today as Chief of the Probation Division for the duration of the war, because we have parted with Mr.

Chappel, whom some of you may remember; he was before this committee last year. We have released him to the Navy, where he has been assigned as an officer under the Judge Advocate General to assist in surveying, and if possible, improving the disciplinary system in the Navy.

Other members of the staff whom we have lost for the duration of the war to the armed services are the assistant chief and an attorney from the Division of Procedural Studies and Statistics, the assistant chief of the Bankruptcy Division, an auditor, and the assistant service officer. More losses are in prospect. The office has furnished five lieutenants to the Navy, 1 to the Army, 1 to the Coast Guard, and 1 to the Women's Army Corps.

Mr. O'NEAL. Have you been able to fill all those vacancies?

Mr. CHANDLER. We have filled them in some way, sir. I am certainly gratified by the caliber of the men whom we have been able to bring in. But you can appreciate that at the best there is an interruption in the service and there is a loss of a certain amount of knowledge and experience.

Mr. O'NEIL. But you have been able to find someone to replace those that have left?

Mr. CHANDLER. Generally, yes, sir; but in one branch of the service we have not been able to do so.

Mr. O'NEIL. We will get to that, I presume, when we come to the details.

Mr. CHANDLER. I wanted to make that caveat; it relates to the Probation Service. I shall deal with that a little later.

Mr. O'NEIL. You may proceed, Mr. Chandler.

REDUCED NUMBER OF PERSONNEL

Mr. CHANDLER. The courts have had the problem of meeting the situation, with a reduced personnel, and they have adopted certain definite policies which have been very helpful.

I spoke last year about the policy of assigning judges from one circuit, if they had leisure time, for service in another. That has been carried out during the year 1943 and I am sure Judge Knox would say, and Justice Miller knows, that the assistance given to the southern district of New York and the District of Columbia has been a measurable factor in the excellent results, which those courts have been able to accomplish.

REDUCTION IN EXPENDITURES FOR JURIES

Your committee last year commented on the savings that were being made in the cost of juries in the Federal courts. We very much appreciated the compliment which the committee expressed on that subject. I am happy to say to you, sir, that there is a further saving thus far in the current year. The appropriation was reduced from $1,940,000 for the previous year to $1,680,000.

Mr. O'NEAL. Are you suggesting a further reduction?

Mr. CHANDLER. I am saying that we shall be well within the reduced. Thus far we are proceeding at a rate of expenditure which would indicate that our obligations for this year will be $1.583,000. The appropriation is $1,680,000. The expense for 1942 was $1,632,177

so that if the present rate of expenditure continues we shall save close to $50,000 in this fiscal year from that.

I would like to suggest that that fact shows that you can, with safety, appropriate to the courts money, with the assurance that, even though we have the appropriation, we are not going to use any more of it than we actually need.

Mr. O'NEAL. A little cut is sometimes encouraging.

Mr. CHANDLER. The saving in cost of juries does not come about altogether accidentally. There is a committee on the selection of jurors in Federal courts which worked for a period of about 2 years.

COMMITTEE ON SELECTION OF JURORS

That committee was appointed by the Chief Justice, after the Judicial Conference in 1941, Judge Knox being made chairman. After almost a year of study it presented at the meeting of the Judicial Conference in 1942 a preliminary report, which was circulated among all of the judges of the country. It was considered by bar associations. The committee, taking into account many suggestions given it, submitted a revised report to the last conference meeting in September

1943.

One of the subjects that the committee went into was ways and means of saving costs of juries, and in the report it devoted 10 pages, 89 to 99, to that subject. I shall leave a copy of the report here. The committee suggested 2 or 3 methods. Without going into them in detail, they all come down to a recommendation that each district, in sending out a call for jurors, take the maximum care to adjust the number summoned to the number who are likely to be needed for service, so that the proportion of idle time of jurors for which the Government will have to pay, and which the jurors will lose from their own occupations, will be reduced to a minimum.

There is one paragraph at the end of the committee report, pages 98-99, that I would like to read.

In

As a general conclusion, it may be stated that in any court where careful thought and attention are given to economizing by more efficient use of jurors much progress can be made. Any economies which can be effected at the present time will be of particular advantage to the Government. Another, and perhaps equally important, consideration is that a more efficient use of jurors results in better satisfied jurors and consequently in a greater willingness to serve. districts where jurors have to report day after day, and then, after waiting around for several hours, are dismissed, there is a feeling that something is wrong with the administration of the jury system. Where jurors are regularly called and have to report and then serve on only two or three short cases during a month there is a feeling that Government money is being wasted and that valuable time is being lost. The opinion of the average citizen concerning the courts is dependent to a large extent on his individual contact with them. Where jurors are made to feel that every effort is being made to conserve their time and to use it efficiently they will have a higher regard for the court.

IMPROVEMENTS IN JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION

I would like to bring this to the attention of the committee; that the task of the Judicial Conference in bringing about improvements in judicial administration differs from that of the head of any executive agency of the Government. Every executive agency of the Government-there may be one or two exceptions-appoints its represen

tatives in the field and controls their terms. In the Federal judicial system, the individual district court has a large measure of independence, which we all agree is desirable. Consequently, if the Judicial Conference desires to secure the adoption of improvements, it must proceed by the method of recommendation and persuasion. It does not have power to compel. That is why I think the work and the approach to its problem of this committee on jurors, which is typical of the way in which the Judicial Conference works, is a very excellent pattern. The conference in effect says to the judges in the various courts, "You, of course, have the responsibility for the management of your own court, but won't you consider the matter, see the results that have been accomplished by such and such a policy?" The result is, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, that the courts are giving increased heed to recommendations of that kind.

PRETRIAL CONFERENCES

There is another field in which that policy is being pursued at the present time. That is the field of pretrial conferences. In some of the previous sessions of the Subcommittee on Appropriations for the Departments of State, Commerce, and Justice and the courts, there was extended consideration, when the appropriations for the courts were reached, of the advantages and some of the difficulties in the use of the pretrial conference method. I shall not repeat the discussion, because, if you are interested, you can consult those reports. But I do want to say that it is the consensus of opinion that for the purpose of simplifying the issues, promoting settlements, saving the time of parties, jurors, and witnesses at the trials, pretrial procedure is very advantageous.

The Judicial Conference is interested in finding out the extent to which the possibilities of that device are being realized. Consequently at the last meeting of the Judicial Conference, the conference authorized the appointment of a committee on the subject, which has now been appointed, and which is headed by the Honorable John J. Parker, the senior United States circuit court judge for the fourth circuit, who has become known throughout the country for his interest in the improvement of judicial methods. In a preparatory study for the committee, we find that of the civil cases that were terminated after issue was joined in 1943, with the exception of certain classes that do not lend themselves to pretrial very well, something like 15.3 percent were pretried in the 84 districts of the United States outside the District of Columbia, and 27.3 percent of those cases in the District of Columbia were pretried.

We find another fact, that of the cases that were pretried in the 84 districts, nearly 83 percent were concentrated in only 20 districts, and the remaining 64 districts furnished only about 17 percent of the cases that were pretried. In the 20 districts that made a substantial use of the pretrial procedure, 27.7 percent of the cases which were ultimately disposed of after issue was joined-presumably the greater number of which were tried were pretried, and in the other 64 districts only 4 percent of such cases were pretried.

That naturally suggests the question, If pretrial conferences are effective in simplifying the process of trial and expediting determination of the controversies, should not they be used to a greater extent?

That problem will be posed to the courts whose reaction will depend upon their individual judgments. It will be presented by this committee, and if the conference approves its conclusions, ultimately by the Judicial Conference.

COURT STENOGRAPHERS FOR FEDERAL COURTS

One very great advance in the arrangements for the courts, in the opinion of the Judicial Conference, has been made within a few weeks in the passage of the bill providing for official court reporters. In many instances, particularly in criminal cases in which applications for habeas corpus have been made long after trial, the courts have been handicapped by the fact that there was no report of the proceedings of the trial. Also, notwithstanding that in the larger cities parties were able to get along pretty well without any provision for official reporters, there were many districts in which there was great difficulty in procuring reports of trials. That difficulty was especially great for poor litigants, persons who did not very often go into the Federal courts and who, when they did, did not know how to protect themselves in the matter of getting a stenographic report of the proceedings.

The bill which is now a law provides for official reporters in all district courts. The numbers and salaries of the reporters are to be fixed by the Judicial Conference, and the rate for transcript, which will be paid by the parties, insofar as they are able to pay, will be fixed by the courts and the Judicial Conference, when these determinations are made, and it is possible to make some approximately correct estimate of the cost, we shall ask for an appropriation to carry out the law. I merely state now that this is a subject which will be brought up later.

Now, just a few words in reference to progress in two important parts of the work of the Federal courts; one, bankruptcy, and the other probation.

BANKRUPTCY ADMINISTRATION

When I was before you last year, I pointed out that it has been possible to organize the Bankruptcy Division in the Administrative Office. Mr. Covey, the Chief of that Division, is now about completing 2 years of service. There have been two sore points in the Federal bankruptcy administration-probably more than two-but there are two particularly with which we have thus far dealt.

One was uncertainty about the proper use of the expense funds which are provided for the referees in bankruptcy through the sums that are deposited by the parties under rules of court, to reimburse the referees for their expenses of administering the cases referred to them. A practice had grown up in a good many districts under which it had been assumed by the referees that if the court required certain amounts to be deposited, whatever the referees could save from those sums above their actual expenses could be appropriated by them and added to their compensation from the fees prescribed by the Bankruptcy Act.

That, of course, is entirely contrary to the Bankruptcy Act. When Mr. Covey came to his position I informed him that that was a condition which ought to be corrected, and that the only way to deal with

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