期刊名称：International Journal for Court Administration
印刷版ISSN：2156-7964
电子版ISSN：2156-7964
出版年度：2009
卷号：2
期号：1
出版社：International Association for Court Administration
摘要：This Overview has two primary purposes. First, it provides judicial system officials with the arguments in favor of and in opposition to the creation of specialized courts. Second, it offers recommendations for consideration by judicial system officials when they are deliberating whether to establish specialized courts. This Overview also provides a review of types of specialized courts that have been established in court systems in some countries in Europe and the United States. This review should inform discussions by judicial leaders as to what specialized courts might be appropriate for their system. Traditionally, specialization refers to specialized subject matter combined with subject-matter expertise. With reference to courts, it references courts that have limited and frequently exclusive jurisdiction in one or more specific fields of the law, for example, commercial courts, administrative courts, labor courts, and drug courts. Specialized courts are defined as tribunals of narrowly focused jurisdiction to which all cases that fall within that jurisdiction are routed. Judges who serve on a specialized court are considered specialists, even experts, in the fields of the law that fall within the court's jurisdiction. Such specialized court judges are to be contrasted with judges in general jurisdiction courts whose caseloads span broad areas of the law and who are considered generalists. Three of the primary benefits associated with the creation of specialized courts are (i) fostering improved decision-making by having experts decide complex cases; (ii) reducing pending case backlogs in generalist courts by shifting select categories of factually and/or legally complex cases to specialized courts more capable of dealing with them, thus generating fewer appeals; and (iii) decreasing the number of judge hours required to process complex cases by having legal and subject-matter experts adjudicate them
