Municipal Judicial Systems

Municipal Judicial Systems encompass a variety of courts of limited or special jurisdiction that form the base of the American justice system.They are termed “municipal” courts not because they are in cities, although they often are, but because they oversee the exercise of municipal or, as they are more frequently called, police powers. These are the powers of government—historically left to the cities and states—to regulate the health, safety, morals, and welfare of the population. In contrast to state courts of general jurisdiction, which also exercise police powers, these lower‐level courts typically hear and decide cases that result in a fine of less than $1,000 or a jail term of less than 12 months; misdemeanor violations involving traffic, petty larceny, prostitution, and similar criminal acts; and matters covered under municipal ordinances. The initial hearing of some felony charges also occurs in municipal courts. Together they account for 90 percent of all courts in the nation and 80 percent of all litigation.

Modern courts of limited jurisdiction have their roots in the American colonies and more distantly in the judicial institutions and common‐law experience of England. The first local colonial courts were rough approximations of their seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century English counterparts. Most colonies had local judges, usually called justices of the peace or magistrates, who possessed limited legal training, served by appointment of the governor, and handled matters ranging from immoral behavior to economic regulation. These local courts, the forerunners of the modern municipal courts, were also important in reminding the colonists that they were entirely capable of delivering their own brand of justice, independent of their English governors.

This powerful heritage of local legal control carried beyond the ratification of the Constitution and reminds us that the most immediate impact of American law is at the local level. The nineteenth‐century justice‐of‐the‐peace courts, for example, operated on a neighborhood basis. The justice was a quasi‐paternal figure, often untrained formally in the law, but a local notable who knew the people who appeared before him. Justices of the peace and magistrates, who depended in most cases on the fines and fees assessed on defendants, viewed themselves as semi‐autonomous figures who managed their own case flows and finances, and more often than not held a presumption of guilt about the defendants who appeared before them.

This scheme of local justice, like the rest of the American judicial system, came under growing pressure during the Progressive Era. Since relatively few records of the actions of these courts survive, it is hard to establish their real level of business. It was surely vast, however. By 1900, for example, over 500 separate courts existed in the Chicago metropolitan area alone, more than double the number in 1880. The courts of Kansas City had 5,100 cases on the dockets in December 1903, twice the total a decade earlier.

As the number of courts and cases grew, so, too, did the work of those courts. European immigration and industrialization, for example, prompted cities and states to criminalize an increasingly broad range of human conduct. Thus, municipal courts typically became the place where judges unfamiliar with immigrant culture and language meted out justice to drunks, petty thieves, and status offenders, such as prostitutes.

The judges were invariably political rather than legal figures. Municipal judgeships were filled in various ways, but whatever the method, the office, especially in light of the court's role as an agent of local social control, had powerful and often pernicious political overtones. These conditions drew the wrath of increasingly organized and professionally oriented municipal bar associations that by 1900 made municipal‐court reform a priority.

The leaders of these bar associations preached that justice would only flow from a politically disinterested court system presided over by legal professionals. Businessmen joined the chorus to protest the waste, corruption, and political influence associated with these municipal courts. Chicago in 1900, for example, had fifty‐two justices of the peace, whose salaries were paid by the fees of litigants, and whose courts suffered from endless delays. The poor who could not afford an appeal were forced to accept the justices’ ruling. At the same time, police magistrates, who heard petty criminal cases, were appointed by the mayor, who wielded extensive political influence over the courts.

Faced with these challenges, Chicago's bar and business leaders adopted reform measures that produced the nation's first modern municipal court system. The Illinois legislature in 1904 authorized an amendment to the Illinois Constitution that granted extensive home‐rule powers to Chicago, including the authority to establish a unified municipal court. This new court, created in 1905, won broad popular support at the polls after a vigorous campaign. It involved a network of branch courts under a single chief justice. The court had jurisdiction to hear civil complaints, ordinance violations, and misdemeanors, and even had preliminary jurisdiction over felonies. The act empowered the chief justice, Harry Olson, to bring a corporate style of management to the courts, including setting a trial calendar, developing civil procedures for the courts, assigning the twenty‐seven associate justices to either the civil or criminal branch, and requiring a monthly reporting of activity. The judges were popularly elected on non‐partisan ballots to six‐year terms.

Under Olson's leadership, the Chicago Municipal Court became a national model. Within a decade, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, New York City, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Birmingham, St. Louis, and Kansas City had adopted the Chicago model. The reformers who fashioned these new courts also embraced a different approach to the relationship of law and society. They expected municipal judges to approach each offender as a social worker might, using knowledge of the person's mental abnormalities, family history, and social experiences to shape appropriate punishments. As a result, a host of new, special‐jurisdiction courts developed, including those dealing with juvenile justice, domestic relations, small claims, and public morals.

The promise of Progressive reform, however, was never fully realized. While the corporate administrative model offered a more effective way to manage case loads, city and state governments often failed to provide funding sufficient to keep pace with rapid population growth. The municipal courts became the subject of increasing complaint because they often provided only assembly‐line justice. While the general ethic of American law presumes innocence, by the 1960s the day‐to‐day practice at the lowest level was a working presumption of guilt, a simple fact of judicial life in heavily overworked local court systems. The Progressive attempt to enlist the voters as a way of eliminating political and partisan influence in the selection of municipal judges fared just as poorly. Turnout in local judicial elections was invariably low; candidates for judgeships were frequently unknown to the electorate. Moreover, outside major metropolitan centers, the tradition of local justice remained strong, especially in the South, where it was so intimately tied to racial control.

Beginning in the 1970s a new reform effort took hold. The National League of Cities pioneered efforts to bring technology to the courtroom, making it possible for judges to administer growing case loads, to settle matters outside the courtroom through mediation and arbitration, and to share information about defendants that would prevent known criminals charged in one court from walking free in another court. Some of the most significant changes took place in California. At the end of the twentieth century, for example, Los Angeles County had the largest municipal justice system in America. It included 50 law enforcement agencies and 24 municipal court districts with 300 judges presiding over half a million arrests a year and more than 2 million traffic citations. California in 1995 gave local judges the opportunities to eliminate justice courts altogether and fold them into municipal courts. Moreover, voters in 1998 passed Proposition 220 that authorized the municipal courts to unify with the general‐jurisdiction superior courts, if the judges of the two court systems could agree to do so. This unification process transferred many of the tasks formerly performed by the municipal courts to the superior courts and streamlined judicial business overall.

Despite these continuing efforts at consolidation and centralization, the American scheme of municipal justice retains strong local ties, extraordinary diversity, and a compelling role as an agency of social control. That tradition means that these courts are often shaped to fit local circumstances, but it also means that local justice does not mean exactly the same thing everywhere in America.
See also Crime; Gambling and Lotteries; Jurisprudence; Legal Profession; Police; Prostitution and Antiprostitution; Sexual Mortality and Sex Reform; Social Work; Urbanization; Working‐Class Life and Culture.

Bibliography

Hiram T. Gilbert , The Municipal Court of Chicago, 1928.
Herbert Jacob , Urban Justice: Law and Order in American Cities, 1976.
Kermit L. Hall , The Magic Mirror: Law in American History, 1989.
Jon'a Meyer , “Doing Justice” in the People's Court: Sentencing by Municipal Court Judges, 1997.
Eric Monkkonen , Police in Urban America, 1860–1920, 1981.
Samuel Walker , Popular Justice, 2d ed., 1998.
Michael Willrich , The Two Percent Solution: Eugenic Jurisprudence and the Socialization of American Law, 1900–1930, Law & History Review 16 (Spring 1998): 63–111.

Kermit L. Hall