Although a steady stream of new judges have been confirmed to the Superior Court bench this year, the courts are set to close out 2024 with 37 unoccupied bench seats.

At the close of 2023, the total number of open seats on the Superior Court bench was 56. Total vacancies have improved year over year, but the number of open seats has not yet reached what Chief Justice Stuart Rabner called a “manageable level” of 25 to 30 that the judiciary needs to function efficiently.

When the state Senate adjourned for the summer in June, there were 40 vacancies. Since the Legislature resumed in September, more retirements have taken place and 12 nominees have received the Senate's advice and consent. At the final Senate session on Dec. 19, seven nominees were confirmed leaving 37 open seats on the Superior Court bench to close out 2024.

According to the latest numbers from the Administrative Office of the Courts, Mercer County leads the state with seven open bench seats. Passaic has five vacancies, while Essex has four.

Monmouth and Union each have three vacancies. Bergen, Camden, Gloucester, Middlesex, Somerset, and Ocean currently have two vacancies each. Burlington, Hudson and Sussex each have one.

Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland, Hunterdon, Morris, Salem and Warren are fully staffed.

The judicial vacancy crisis reached its apex in May 2022 when there were 78 open seats on the Superior Court bench.

The total number of Superior Court judgeships in New Jersey is roughly 460, which means around 9% of those seats are currently unoccupied. The vacancy crisis led to case backlogs and eventually caused several vicinages to stop performing trials on certain civil matters. Passaic County was the last to reopen trials in March 2024.

To combat the backlog and vacancies, the state judiciary released a plan last March to strategically eliminate the backlog within three years. That plan said that at the start of 2024, there were 81,415 backlogged cases, more than double the number as of June 2019.

Senate President Nicholas P. Scutari deemed the judicial vacancy crisis over last March, and said vacancies were back to pre-pandemic levels. At that time, there were 38 open seats on the bench.

The New Jersey State Bar Association president at the time, Timothy F. McGoughran, pushed back and said we are not quite out of the woods yet.

In October, the new NJSBA president, William H. Mergner Jr., told the Law Journal: "We appear to be going backwards with no real explanation as to why more judges have not been confirmed."