My recent suggestion within these pages that the Georgia judiciary be self-funding ‘A self-funding judiciary,” May 28, 2008 has incited some thoughtful comment. As I have been proposing funding the judiciary through users fees and other self-generated sources for several years, most typically over cocktails, the content of the responses is familiar and anticipated, though more coherently soberly composed than I am used to.
The element of my idea for self-funding that always draws the most fire is that civil litigants would pay a post-litigation user fee that is based upon the dollars exchanged between the parties as a consequence of the litigation. The first, and most obvious, criticism of this idea is that the imposition of such a user fee would create an incentive for judges to favor dispositions representing enormous awards. I have a number of responses:
