Learning from recession experience

Abstract

Courts, like all public sector institutions, sometimes experience budgetary difficulties as the result of general economic recessions. In earlier decades, when counties financed the bulk of trial court operations, the state judicial budget was so small that it was not a realistic target for budget-cutters. The impact of recessions on county budgets for courts was difficult to assess because it was simply not feasible to capture and analyze information from thousands of local governments on how trial courts were affected or to distinguish between the affluent counties and those in dire straits.