One event he attended in Washington D.C. was an awards ceremony for 4th Judicial District Circuit Court Judge Duane Slone, who was named the 2019 recipient of the National Center for State Courts’ prestigious William H. Rehnquist Award for Judicial Excellence. Judge Slone was recognized for his pioneering efforts to combat addiction through innovative strategies like the Tennessee Recovery Oriented Compliance Strategy docket, which has seen 110 neonatal abstinence syndrome-free births by program participants in recent years. Read the full story from The Chagganoogan.

"There is a need for 20.9 judges to handle the increasingly complex and demand workload of district courts across New Mexico, according to a study by the National Center for State Courts," Massey pointed out. Lawmakers last created new judges in 2014. Read the full story from Ruidoso news.

According to a study by the nonprofit National Center for State Courts, New Mexico could use some 21 more district judges to handle the workload. Read the full story from the Santa Fe New Mexican.

Bill Raftery, a senior analyst at the National Center for State Courts, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Williamsburg, Va., cautioned that there are no model courts, and that California's and Arizona's court structures differ from Cook's in key ways. What matters more is criminal justice stakeholders all rowing in the same direction. "If somebody with the best of intentions comes in and tries real hard, you still might not get full access to justice, but you're in a much better circumstance if everyone's going in trying." Read the full story in Crain's Chicago Business.

The chief justice also briefly touched on a National Center for State Courts report on the trial court’s calendar system and case flow proposals that he said has been a “source of great consternation” among judges. Read the full story from The Guam Daily Post.

As a board member for the National Center for State Courts, Mr. Battiste said that working closely with judges nationwide provided a perspective into the challenges faced by the Third Branch. Read the full story from Yahoo! Finance.

Mandatory judicial retirement ages are a fraught subject nationally, with opponents arguing that they are unfair, since the two other branches of government don’t face similar limitations, according to William E. Raftery, a senior analyst at the National Center for State Courts. Proponents counter that age caps create opportunities for younger lawyers to make their mark. Read the full story from the Providence Journal.

The National Center for State Courts had already done a study to evaluate Judge Bennett’s jury instruction, because there was a concern that it might anger jurors and have a reverse, negative impact. They attempted to measure its efficacy in a simulated environment, not with an actual jury, but the results were inconclusive. Judge Bennett took that as a good sign—no harm, no foul. Read the full story from D Magazine.

This request is part of a five-year plan to bring in new judges to address the judicial branch's workload, which is currently 30 judges short of where it should be, according to a workload formula by the National Center for State Courts. Read the full story from the Des Moines Register.