States consider how their courts are structured: how many trial court types are too many?

By Bill Raftery 

In 2024, Georgia voters added a constitutional amendment to add a Tax Court to its existing judicial system; the court is expected to take its first cases in 2026. This follows a successful 2018 effort to create a State-Wide Business Court and efforts in other states to create specialized, stand-alone courts to handle specific case types. These recent efforts are part of a discussion that has taken place in the United States for centuries about how best to organize and structure courts to balance specialization, simplicity, and efficiency.  

After the Revolutionary War, states adopted the practice in place in Great Britain, dating back over 600 years, of a court for every issue or location. By 1617, England alone had nearly 88 separate court types throughout the nation. Large cities and towns with special privileges dating back centuries, or courts of special jurisdiction that heard only specific types of cases, were incredibly common. In the UK in the late 1800s, and in the US in the early 1900s, efforts were made to simplify these structures into, at most, four different courts: trial courts of limited jurisdiction, trial courts of general jurisdiction, and a court of last resort (often called the state's supreme court). Later, a fourth court type (intermediate appellate court, often called the state's court of appeals) would be added. 

Proponents of simplification made several arguments for court consolidation. Court structures were confusing both to lawyers and non-lawyers. They create inefficiencies where a case, or portions of a case, could be contested in several courts at the same time. Judicial resources were wasted by having a special court that only heard one or a few types of cases, where there were not enough of those case types to justify a full court. It is better to have a general jurisdiction court with a probate division, or a traffic division, or a juvenile division, than to have 3 different courts. Judges or cases could be moved from division to division as needed, something that could not be easily done if the courts were separate. In the last 25 years, these interests have promoted states such as Arkansas, California, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont towards consolidating their trial court systems. 

Proponents of continuing the prior practices made several arguments; the primary one was that localization or specialization provided more or better justice. It is better to have a multitude of courts (such as a justice of the peace or municipal) closer to the public than one court at a central location, such as the county seat. Moreover, special jurisdiction courts meant the judges of those states were familiar and focused on one area, encouraging a greater depth of knowledge. In this context, Georgia's move to put a Tax Court within its judiciary is not unheard of. In the last 25 years, legislatures and/or voters in states such as Georgia (State-Wide Business), Kentucky (Family), Texas (Business), Utah (Business and Chancery), West Virginia (Family), and Wyoming (Chancery) have moved to create new types of courts. 

NCSC's Court Structure Tool can help compare these changes and structures across states.  

Comment below and tell us what you are seeing in your courts or state regarding efforts related to court-type consolidation or expansion.