Although optimistic as the country transitions out of the pandemic, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Freda L. Wolfson and New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner said they were concerned about the alarming number of judicial vacancies and urged they be filled. 
The judges made the remarks this morning at the annual State of the Judiciary session of the New Jersey State Bar Association (NJSBA) Annual Meeting.
In his introduction of the judges, NJSBA President Domenick Carmagnola noted, “These past 14 months have rocked our legal system to its core, with our courts reinventing themselves and adapting to new technologies in a matter of weeks. Our courts have had to make these changes and adjustments at a time when the numbers on our state and federal bench have been at crisis levels.”
Rabner said the pandemic has presented a number of serious challenges that could develop into crises. Chief among the challenges: the large number of criminal defendants in county jails awaiting trial dates; growing number of aging and pending cases that can’t be resolved until the courts can support more in-person activity; and the overwhelming number of potential evictions in landlord/tenant matters.
“We can’t realistically hope to confront all of those challenges at once without a full complement of judges,” he said. 
Rabner appreciated the NJSBA’s strong advocacy stressing the urgent need to fill judicial vacancies and he urged the executive and legislative branches to work to reduce vacancies to more manageable levels.
“In the best of times, a court system operating without 50 or more judges can’t expect to administer justice efficiently and these are not the best of times,” he said.
At one point this year, the state reached a record-high of 75 judicial vacancies—nearly 20% of the trial court bench— and today there are 67 vacancies. Of those, some have been remained unfilled for three or more years.
“If vacancies remain at unusually high levels, we can expect significant delays even when in-person trials resume at full strength,” Rabner said.
Wolfson noted there were six federal district court judge vacancies when she was appointed chief judge in May 2019, “and sadly, that has not changed, although we finally have reason to believe that new judges will join us this year.”
The federal courts, which has not had a new district court judge since summer 2016, has 11 active judges, while it needs 17 to be working at full strength.
“These numbers are even more glaring when you take into account our caseload, number of filings and our weighted cases, meaning the complexity of our cases,” she said.
Wolfson said she is optimistic President Joe Biden’s four nominations for the New Jersey bench will be quickly confirmed.