The General Assembly’s interim commission on courts has posted agendas for August 22 (pdf) and August 28(pdf).

For August 22:

The Commission will receive an update from the Judicial Technology and Automation Committee (JTAC), discuss public accessibility to statutes that are not compiled in the Indiana Code, and discuss the possible repeal of IC 33-30 concerning the establishment and operation of county courts (as of January 1, 2009, no county court will exist in Indiana).

Briefly – JTAC is the planned statewide computer system that would put various sorts of case information online. I’m not sure what the exact scope is at this point, but information could include case management information and possibly extend to online filing.

Statutes not compiled in the Indiana Code are sometimes referred to as “non-code” statutes. The idea is that the Code is for those laws of long duration and broad scope. Most often, statutes don’t get codified when they are of short duration. For example, when you set up a committee with staggered terms, you have to do an initial set up that staggers the membership by giving some members terms with shorter than normal durations. Since it happens only once, you don’t want to clutter up the Code with it. Non-Code provisions are published in the Acts of Indiana, but aren’t nearly as accessible as the online code — which is understandable since the laws in the Code tend to have a greater impact than non-code provisions.

County courts were sort of a hybrid between regular courts and small claims courts. They had jurisdictional limits of $10,000; a lesser known fact I once used to good effect when a big city lawyer from Indy, where I don’t think they had county courts, mistakenly filed suit in a nearby county court which has since been converted to a court of general jurisdiction.

For August 28:

At the meeting, the Commission will discuss judicial mandates and alternatives to the current system of judicial mandates, consider a request from Johnson County for additional judicial officers, discuss the need for a sixth three judge panel for the Indiana Court of Appeals, and discuss improving public access to information concerning retention elections for judges of the Indiana Supreme Court, Indiana Court of Appeals, and Indiana Tax Court.

Mandates have been coming up a fair amount recently as judges have sought to assert their authority over the operations of the courts in budgetary matters. Where department heads in other parts of county government are at the mercy of the county council in terms of approving their budgets and making sure they have the resources to accomplish their duties, courts can by-and-large dictate to the county council what their budgets are going to be. Fortunately, most judges — even the ones who end up having to use their mandate powers — seem to use this authority sparingly.