Court Caseload Management: The Role of Judges and Administrative Assistants

Abstract

ResumoA gestão do acervo de processos pendentes em tribunais é essencial para garantir que os processos serão julgados de maneira célere, e isso depende de como juízes e assistentes administrativos lidam com suas cargas de trabalho. Resultados de diversos estudos indicam que um aumento no acervo de tribunais tende a gerar um aumento na produção judicial dos juízes. Entretanto alguns autores apontam que essa relação é mais complexa do que aparenta. No intuito de desenvolver um entendimento mais aprofundado dessa relação, é testado, neste trabalho, um conjunto de hipóteses diretas e de moderação. Foram utilizados dados secundários referentes a 566 juízes que trabalham em varas de primeira instância da Justiça Estadual de São Paulo, Brasil. Os resultados indicam uma relação direta e positiva entre o acervo da vara e a produção dos juízes, mas a força dessa relação varia de acordo com a especialidade da vara. Os resultados também mostram que a quantidade de assistentes administrativos, a experiência e os locais em que o juiz atua moderam a relação entre acervo e produção judicial. Os resultados contribuem para o desenvolvimento de estratégias gerenciais a fim de enfrentar o congestionamento de tribunais brasileiros.Palavras-chave: judiciário; gestão de tribunais; juízes; produção; acervo. AbstractCourt caseload management is of key importance for guaranteeing the adjudication of cases and depends on how judges and administrative assistants deal with their workload. Results from several studies indicate that an increase in court caseload tends to generate an increase in the judge's production. However, some authors argue that this relationship is far more complex. To develop a fuller understanding of this relationship we tested an array of direct and moderating hypotheses. We used secondary data from 566 judges working in first trial courts in the State Justice System of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The results indicate a direct and positive relationship between court caseload and judge production, but the strength of this relationship depends on court specialty. The findings also indicate that the number of administrative assistants, judge experience and the number of places a judge works all moderate the caseload-production relationship. The results contribute to the development of strategies to address the delays and congestion of courts, two of the main Brazilian Judiciary problems.

Productivity Antecedents of Brazilian Courts of Justice: Evidence from Justiça em Números

“…In addition, although the results have taken data from all state courts, further studies are needed to identify whether there is heterogeneity between these courts depending on their geographic location and size. A prominent work in this direction is Gomes, Guimarães, and Akutsu, (2017) about São Paulo's state court With respect to the first hypothesis about the impact of IT investments on productivity, it is understood that its confirmation is consistent with an updated literature review (Aalst, La Rosa, & Santoro, 2016) and even with classics (Hammer, 1990) from the area of business process automation, whose constructs could not be operationalized using only the data from the Justiça em Números report. These works point to IT investments as an enabling factor for the improvement of organizational processes and these, in turn, as sources of improvement of organizational performance.…”

“…Academic papers that address empirical data on the national judiciary have advanced little in analysis, and have given more focus to providing a description of the national scenario (Gomes & Guimarães, 2013;Nogueira, Oliveira, Vasconcelos, & Oliveira, 2012;, or analyzing state courts (Gomes, Guimarães, & Akutsu, 2017). Emphasis should be given to Gomes and Guimarães (2013), who published a bibliometric article on judiciary performance focusing on specific roles judges have, an approach that the present work seeks to overcome.…”

“…Emphasis should be given to Gomes and Guimarães (2013), who published a bibliometric article on judiciary performance focusing on specific roles judges have, an approach that the present work seeks to overcome. In addition, international literature offers a few empirical works (Beenstock & Haitovsky, 2004;Dimitrova-Grajzl, Grajzl, Sustersic, & Zajc, 2012;Gomes et al, 2017;Ippoliti, Melcarne, & Ramello, 2015;Mitsopoulos & Pelagidis, 2007); however, they provide evidence that is still rather limited, usually circumscribed to economic variables, and sometimes with inconclusive results.…”

Burnout Syndrome in Public Servants: Prevalence and association with Occupational Stressors

“…The psychological exhaustion dimension reveals that nearly a third of the servants are performing their activities with feelings of emotional and physical fatigue, being superior to the prevalence of 26.1% (n=518) found in psychologists (Rodriguez & Carlotto, 2014) and 17.8% (n=169) in professors (Costa et al, 2013). This dimension, generally related to work overload (Alarcon, 2011;Gil-Monte et al, 2016) can be explained by the nature of the activities of public servants, performed within a context of intensified work pace, high level of demands for productivity and fast processes (Carmo, 2014;Gomes, Guimaraes, & Akutsu, 2017). According to Freudenberg (1974), it is common, about this syndrome, the existence of a strong sensation of frustration and exhaustion in relation to work, derived from the need to perform the latter quickly, due to excess of tasks.…”

Tools, methods, and some caveats to analyze the Brazilian Judiciary Performance data.

“…Some literature about Judiciary in Brazil uses the "Justice in Numbers" report of National Justice Council (Conselho Nacional de Justiça [CNJ]) (Nogueira, Oliveira, Vasconcelos, & Oliveira, 2012;Gomes, Guimaraes, & Akutsu, 2017;Louro, Santos, & Zanquetto, 2017), but few take additional methodological steps for robust results or even use weaker methods. We point out some caveats to this dataset, and we raise some methodological issues to improve future studies in Brazil.…”