The legal system is an independent arm of government. This implies that it must serve its purpose and responsibility without external interference. This brings a popular question; what is the purpose of the courts and what responsibilities does the court bear. The first responsibility of courts was o interpret law. In a mixed community, different person have different opinions on various sections of law. Each person interprets law to his or her advantage. Thus by being the responsible party in interpreting the law, the court’s purpose is clearly stated to present law as a balanced document for all. While serving their mandates the courts assume sanity until another party rises a query (Baum, 2012). Thus, unless they are required to do so, the court will remain silent on a certain section of law that may be under debate. The court being the balancing party has to have strong foundations such that it does not serve its mandate under any duress. These foundations include structural, physical, and legal among other foundation elements. The most basic of all is a requirement for the courts to be served by persons who have undoubtedly high qualifications and knowledge on matters of law. This is to ensure that the persons that the courts procure at any capacity have both the legal and intellectual ability to command justice (Vera, 2006).
In ensuring that the courts perform their duty efficiently, there have been national efforts that have been evidenced at state level to restructure the courts. Courts restructuring is a regular process that sees the courts move to accommodate latest changes in technology as well as incorporating new \ideas that are for the benefit of their productivity. The restructuring also occurs when there is change in the sections of law or law itself (through overall constitution amendment). One of the ways of court restructuring is court consolidation. The consolidation is derived from the word consolidate which is to bring together (Vera, 2006). Court consolidation thus came in to bring together all the persons that work in the court system under one appointing authority (Baum, 2012). The courts had previously had its staff being appointed from distributed authorities. This saw the appointing bodies being associate divisions and court circuit. This now has been narrowed to a circuit clerk as the only appointing authority (Vera, 2006).
Court consolidation has impacted greatly on the court system and has indeed helped in the courts serving their purpose and observing their responsibilities. First, the courts can now act as a single body. While there are different appointing authorities, court officers may be drawn into controversy on the superiority of their appointing authorities this ending up in stigmatization of those who are preserved to be appointed by lesser authorities (Vera, 2006). Secondly, with a uniform appointing authority there is no blame game on who appointed wrong officers. This creates pleasure on the appointing authority to maintain high level of competence in appointment. Thus leads to appointment of high quality officers which helps in attaining optimum results from the courts.
Courts are vital in a society. The balance they bring if absent can cause the state a lot of financial loss as well as other losses that are attributed in controversies like time wasted, psychological problems which lead to low production, imbalance in society values, even international in equilibrium in terms of relationships (Baum, 2012). Thus all involved parties should be keen in maintaining high level of proficiency so as to attain this balance. The restructuring of courts which includes consolidation is one of the applauded steps that have helped in attaining balance in law. These and other steps will always help run the courts better even in future.
References
Baum, L., (2012). American Courts: Process and Policy. New York: CengageBrain
Vera, D., (2006). Vault Guide to Law Firm Diversity Programs. New York: Vault Inc
