David C Steelman
David C. Steelman is a retired member of the Massachusetts and New Hampshire bar, with an honorary appointment in 2022-2024 as Affiliate Professor of Justice Studies in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of New Hampshire. Further details about his management consulting, research, scholarship, and other professional activities and affiliations are available at https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4022-5744.
David graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in history in 1967 from the University of New Hampshire, and he received his MA in 1970 as a Ford Foundation Teaching Fellow in the History Department at the University. In 1974, he received a JD from the Boston University School of Law.
For the greater part of his legal career, David worked for the nonprofit National Center for State Courts, as a staff attorney (1974-77); senior staff attorney (1977-87); regional vice president (1987-92); senior fellow (1992-1994); and principal court management consultant (1994-2013). In that role, he provided on-site court management advice to judges and justice officials in more than three dozen American states and a dozen foreign countries.
Early in his time with the National Center, he was an adjunct professor (1977-1983) in the Evening College of Boston College. Aside from his later work for the National Center, he was also a visiting caseflow management specialist in April 2004 at the Research Institute on Judicial Systems at the University of Bologna in Italy; the lead case-management trainer for commercial court judges in the 2008-09 Abu Dhabi Commercial Courts Modernization Project for the Abu Dhabi Government Restructuring Committee; and a member of a three-person international expert advisory board in 2009 for the Saudi Arabian Judicial System Modernization Project of the Ministry of Justice for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
After his retirement from the National Center in December 2013, he was managing director of Global Justice Management Consulting, LLC, in 2014-2015.
As a US Army officer, David was awarded a Bronze Star in July 1971 for his service in Vietnam. In 1985, he received the National Center’s Excellence Award. He and his wife, Virginia Theo-Steelman, Ed.D., live in Manchester, New Hampshire. They have endowed three scholarships for students at the University of New Hampshire, and in 2009 they received the University’s Hubbard Family Award for Service to Philanthropy.
With John Cerullo, David is co-author of The Impeachment of Chief Justice David Brock: Judicial Independence and Civic Populism (2017). David’s previous titles include Model Time Standards for State Trial Courts (reporter, with Richard Van Duizend and Lee Suskin) (2011); Caseflow Management: The Heart of Court Management in the New Millennium (lead author) (2000, 2004); Court Business Process Enhancement Guide (2003); Changing Times in Trial Courts: Caseflow Management and Delay Reduction in Urban Trial Courts (contributing author with Barry Mahoney, et al.) (1988); and Traffic Court Procedure and Administration, 2d ed. (co-author with James P. Economos) (1983).
Phone: 603-391-2374
Address: 792 Maple Street
Manchester, NH 03104-3211, USA
David graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in history in 1967 from the University of New Hampshire, and he received his MA in 1970 as a Ford Foundation Teaching Fellow in the History Department at the University. In 1974, he received a JD from the Boston University School of Law.
For the greater part of his legal career, David worked for the nonprofit National Center for State Courts, as a staff attorney (1974-77); senior staff attorney (1977-87); regional vice president (1987-92); senior fellow (1992-1994); and principal court management consultant (1994-2013). In that role, he provided on-site court management advice to judges and justice officials in more than three dozen American states and a dozen foreign countries.
Early in his time with the National Center, he was an adjunct professor (1977-1983) in the Evening College of Boston College. Aside from his later work for the National Center, he was also a visiting caseflow management specialist in April 2004 at the Research Institute on Judicial Systems at the University of Bologna in Italy; the lead case-management trainer for commercial court judges in the 2008-09 Abu Dhabi Commercial Courts Modernization Project for the Abu Dhabi Government Restructuring Committee; and a member of a three-person international expert advisory board in 2009 for the Saudi Arabian Judicial System Modernization Project of the Ministry of Justice for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
After his retirement from the National Center in December 2013, he was managing director of Global Justice Management Consulting, LLC, in 2014-2015.
As a US Army officer, David was awarded a Bronze Star in July 1971 for his service in Vietnam. In 1985, he received the National Center’s Excellence Award. He and his wife, Virginia Theo-Steelman, Ed.D., live in Manchester, New Hampshire. They have endowed three scholarships for students at the University of New Hampshire, and in 2009 they received the University’s Hubbard Family Award for Service to Philanthropy.
With John Cerullo, David is co-author of The Impeachment of Chief Justice David Brock: Judicial Independence and Civic Populism (2017). David’s previous titles include Model Time Standards for State Trial Courts (reporter, with Richard Van Duizend and Lee Suskin) (2011); Caseflow Management: The Heart of Court Management in the New Millennium (lead author) (2000, 2004); Court Business Process Enhancement Guide (2003); Changing Times in Trial Courts: Caseflow Management and Delay Reduction in Urban Trial Courts (contributing author with Barry Mahoney, et al.) (1988); and Traffic Court Procedure and Administration, 2d ed. (co-author with James P. Economos) (1983).
Phone: 603-391-2374
Address: 792 Maple Street
Manchester, NH 03104-3211, USA
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courts throughout the country, and to develop the outline for the final product. David Steelman joined the team in 2002, and he combined the committee’s documentation and analysis with his own independent research into business process review literature to produce this Guide. Intended as an aid for judges and court managers who deal with information technology in the courts, this Guide draws on an extensive body of print and electronic literature on process improvement and process reengineering. It relies on the insights of prominent process-improvement and process-reengineering professionals from the private and public sectors. An especially valuable resource is from the Federal government — the U.S. General Accounting Office’s Business Process Reengineering Assessment Guide (1997) (http://www.gao.gov/special.pubs/bprag/
ai10115.pdf), which served as an important reference source throughout the preparation of the Guide.
In the last decades of the twentieth century, constitutional amendments granted the state’s judiciary a much higher level of independence than it had historically enjoyed. A bipartisan body of legislators, however, viewed this break from the past with suspicion. Clashes over court administration and judicial corruption, then a protracted battle over court rulings on educational funding, deepened their antipathy.
When information emerged regarding some of the Chief Justice’s administrative actions, that antipathy exploded into an impeachment crisis. Brock’s trial was followed by a broad effort to recalibrate legislative-judicial relations in the state. It also raised significant questions about state-level judicial autonomy, and about impeachment itself as a feature of democratic governance, that resonant far beyond New Hampshire’s borders.
The time to disposition standards set forth in this document, based on a review of the experience of state courts, are intended to establish a reasonable set of expectations for the courts, for lawyers, and for the public. They reflect a review of the case disposition times currently being achieved in selected jurisdictions around the country as well as consideration of the various time standards adopted by states, local jurisdictions, and national organizations.
These are “Model Time Standards.” They are intended to unify the current sets of disparate national time standards to the greatest degree possible. The model standards are designed for use by the judicial branch of each state as a basis for establishing its own time standards covering general and limited jurisdiction courts, regardless of the source of funding for those courts. For the courts, the state standards set forth achievable goals. For lawyers, state standards establish a time framework within which to conduct their fact-gathering, preparation, and advocacy activities. For members of the public, state standards are intended to define what can be expected of their courts.
The main premise of this book is that caseflow management is more than just a way to reduce or avoid delay, however. In fact, caseflow management is the conceptual heart of court management in general. We can fully understand courts as organizations only if we understand the requirements of caseflow management. In managing a court, the chief judge and court managers should focus first on caseflow management—not just because it addresses problems of delay or backlog, but more importantly because it is the very foundation of court management in general. Even if a court is current and has no problems of delay, it should have an effective caseflow management program, both as a means to achieve successful general court management and as a key aspect of successful overall court management.
Papers by David C Steelman
Legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, published in 2020
by Cambridge University Press. In this book, the author examines
the “hybrid” international/national criminal tribunal, known as the
Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), which was created under a
pathbreaking bilateral treaty between the United Nations (UN) and
the country of Sierra Leone as a UN member state. Jalloh seeks to
evaluate the contributions made by SCSL to the development of
international criminal law. In particular, he assesses the scope and
significance of SCSL legal contributions from its solutions to problems
arising between its opening and the completion of its work in 2013,
having to do with personal and temporal jurisdiction; gender crimes
as crimes against humanity; recruitment of children as war crimes;
head-of-state immunity; amnesty; and tensions between criminal
tribunals and truth commissions
courts throughout the country, and to develop the outline for the final product. David Steelman joined the team in 2002, and he combined the committee’s documentation and analysis with his own independent research into business process review literature to produce this Guide. Intended as an aid for judges and court managers who deal with information technology in the courts, this Guide draws on an extensive body of print and electronic literature on process improvement and process reengineering. It relies on the insights of prominent process-improvement and process-reengineering professionals from the private and public sectors. An especially valuable resource is from the Federal government — the U.S. General Accounting Office’s Business Process Reengineering Assessment Guide (1997) (http://www.gao.gov/special.pubs/bprag/
ai10115.pdf), which served as an important reference source throughout the preparation of the Guide.
In the last decades of the twentieth century, constitutional amendments granted the state’s judiciary a much higher level of independence than it had historically enjoyed. A bipartisan body of legislators, however, viewed this break from the past with suspicion. Clashes over court administration and judicial corruption, then a protracted battle over court rulings on educational funding, deepened their antipathy.
When information emerged regarding some of the Chief Justice’s administrative actions, that antipathy exploded into an impeachment crisis. Brock’s trial was followed by a broad effort to recalibrate legislative-judicial relations in the state. It also raised significant questions about state-level judicial autonomy, and about impeachment itself as a feature of democratic governance, that resonant far beyond New Hampshire’s borders.
The time to disposition standards set forth in this document, based on a review of the experience of state courts, are intended to establish a reasonable set of expectations for the courts, for lawyers, and for the public. They reflect a review of the case disposition times currently being achieved in selected jurisdictions around the country as well as consideration of the various time standards adopted by states, local jurisdictions, and national organizations.
These are “Model Time Standards.” They are intended to unify the current sets of disparate national time standards to the greatest degree possible. The model standards are designed for use by the judicial branch of each state as a basis for establishing its own time standards covering general and limited jurisdiction courts, regardless of the source of funding for those courts. For the courts, the state standards set forth achievable goals. For lawyers, state standards establish a time framework within which to conduct their fact-gathering, preparation, and advocacy activities. For members of the public, state standards are intended to define what can be expected of their courts.
The main premise of this book is that caseflow management is more than just a way to reduce or avoid delay, however. In fact, caseflow management is the conceptual heart of court management in general. We can fully understand courts as organizations only if we understand the requirements of caseflow management. In managing a court, the chief judge and court managers should focus first on caseflow management—not just because it addresses problems of delay or backlog, but more importantly because it is the very foundation of court management in general. Even if a court is current and has no problems of delay, it should have an effective caseflow management program, both as a means to achieve successful general court management and as a key aspect of successful overall court management.
Legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, published in 2020
by Cambridge University Press. In this book, the author examines
the “hybrid” international/national criminal tribunal, known as the
Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), which was created under a
pathbreaking bilateral treaty between the United Nations (UN) and
the country of Sierra Leone as a UN member state. Jalloh seeks to
evaluate the contributions made by SCSL to the development of
international criminal law. In particular, he assesses the scope and
significance of SCSL legal contributions from its solutions to problems
arising between its opening and the completion of its work in 2013,
having to do with personal and temporal jurisdiction; gender crimes
as crimes against humanity; recruitment of children as war crimes;
head-of-state immunity; amnesty; and tensions between criminal
tribunals and truth commissions
public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law,” as provided in the European Convention on Human Rights.
than on court resources and formal rules or procedures in our efforts to improve the pace of litigation. In the 1980s. aggressive caseflow management was an important part of our efforts to change local legal culture. Yet our overall results have been mixed. What must we do in the future? We must take further steps to refine caseflow management, but we must at the same time consider other factors possibly linked to local legal culture that could be changed through other kinds of programs. Court structure and the resources available to courts cannot be overlooked, and such theories of organization dynamics as the "Abilene Paradox" may suggest further ways to address the problem.
This paper was prepared as part of the Criminal Courts Training and Technical Assistance Project, funded by Grant No. 2011-DP-BX-K001 awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a component of the Office of Justice Programs in the U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view or opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
than court congestion and delay. The assertion that ‘‘justice delayed is
justice denied’’ is one of the most frequently-quoted themes in the
discourse of American court management. In recent decades, both
federal and state courts in America have given considerable attention
to this problem. This paper reviews the course of delay reduction and
delay prevention efforts in American courts, with particular attention to
the pace of litigation for civil and criminal cases in state trial courts
between the mid-1970s and the early 1990s.
Years of research and experience in courts across the country confirm that for caseflow management to work effectively in a court, it is essential that there be a solid management foundation: there must be (a) leadership; (b) commitment among judges and court staff members to managing the pace of litigation; (c) communications within the
court and with lawyers and other institutional participants in the case process; and (d) a learning environment enabling a court to be flexible in the face of changing events. Moreover, there must be active attention to features that caseflow management shares with day-to-day management of any activity: (1) establishing appropriate expectations;
(2) monitoring actual performance; and (3) holding participants accountable and taking responsibility to bring actual performance more in line with expectations.