Five years after a blue-ribbon commission said the state court system was failing the public, the state's top judges yesterday said persistent reforms have dramatically improved the way the state dispenses justice.
"I think we have done . . . things that have revolutionized the way that we are delivering justice," Margaret Marshall, chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, told Globe reporters and editors.
At her prodding, a commission led by the Rev. J. Donald Monan, former president of Boston College, studied the courts and in 2003 found them "drowning in managerial confusion."
In response to the Monan study, Marshall appointed Superior Court Judge Robert Mulligan as the chief justice for administration and management. His five-year term expires October. Mulligan has day-to-day responsibility for managing the courts.
With Mulligan sitting by her side yesterday, Marshall singled out three steps he has undertaken in the last five years to improve the courts.
She said Mulligan did a statewide workload analysis to discover how many people were needed to work in each courthouse and still improve efficiency.
He also set specific goals and deadlines for the court system, including tracking how long it takes to resolve cases. The seven court departments are now generally meeting those deadlines for clearing cases and cutting down a case backlog, the judges said.
"For the first time the Trial Courts are really measuring its performance with concrete, empirical data, to see how we are doing in meeting our commitment to deliver justice . . . in a more timely way," Mulligan said.
The third step was to create what Marshall called the "gold standard" for evaluating the judges, which is done by lawyers, jurors, and court employees.
Mulligan said an efficient court system saves money for cities and towns because police are done with criminal cases after two court dates, not three or more.
Marshall said the improved efficiency came without asking for additional powers from the Legislature, by taking suggestions from court employees, and by forcing the sometimes feuding branches of the judiciary to work together toward collective change.
She said she and her six colleagues on the Supreme Judicial Court make their deadline of issuing written opinions within 130 days of oral arguments about 90 percent of the time. There are exceptions, Marshall added, such as the 2003 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, a case that she said the "whole world was watching." That took 259 days from argument to release of the 4 to 3 ruling.
Also endorsing the reforms yesterday was Boston lawyer Michael B. Keating, chairman of the Court Management Advisory Board, created by the Legislature after the Monan commission's report.
Keating said his group includes both lawyers and management professionals, making the Monan-inspired reform effort different than any that came before.
"Frankly, I think that's made all the difference," he said. "The people who have made the most impact are the non-lawyers."
The reforms will be the subject of a symposium at the John Adams Courthouse in downtown Boston this afternoon, an event featuring Ronald M. George, chief justice of California's top court.
