Family and divorce court can be hard enough. Issues of alimony, modifying alimony, child support, and child custody or always emotionally charged and the stakes high. When people are forced to address these issues through our current patchwork of electronic courts it can be even more difficult.

As the court rollout electronic solutions, there will need to be standards. An immediate area of tension is the absolute constitutional requirement that courts remain open to the public. This cannot be compromised. When people enter the courtroom, there are security measures in place. There is the authority of the judge the inherent nature of the atmosphere that makes going to court seems important. Most people require no more motivation than that to be on best behavior. There are also security measures from the entrance to the actual courtroom. Security officers keep an eye on the court customers to make sure that there are no loud or violent disputes among the people present and no attacks on the judges and court staff.

On a telephonic court appearance, those social pressures disappear. The court customer may be sitting at home in a car or outside. The atmospherics of the courtroom does not envelop the participant. There is no court officer to remind people that this is a place where decorum matters. The judge may be sitting in a less than professional appearing environment. Note judges should have backdrops on their video conferences so we do not see their kitchens.

I appeared via telephone a number of times to a particular judge and was told that during a pandemic the phone number and login codes would remain the same. I received an email: at 2 PM. I called and sat on hold for 45 minutes. I emailed back and forth with court staff and others only to find that I had dialed into the usual number. The court had been harassed by a court customer who got the codes and then even when it was not his appearance was dialing and interfering with the court's proceedings rendering the whole dial in sequence contaminated and hence it had to be changed. I did not get this information until it was too late and the case had to be rescheduled. Best practices must include an ability by the court and a channel administrator to control the flow. Most cases will not require etiquette police. However, the ability to control the inputs is the only way that remote court appearances will result in a clean record and accomplish the goal of due process. If there is no clear record, there the ability to appeal is limited.

Hopefully, those that would disrupt proceedings will become apparent through telephonic and video conference appearances and will be identified and thwarted before they cause too much may have. Coronavirus kills the courts in the reborn court's formulate orderly best practices for electronic court appearances.

Photo by Jason Mowry via Unsplash.