Petition of Blake

• Decision Date: 19 December 1990
• Citation: 593 A.2d 1267,527 Pa. 456
• Parties: In re Petition of Hon. Edward J. BLAKE, President Judge of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, Individually, on Behalf of, and with the Board of Judges, consisting of Judges of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia for relief from the Order of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Dated
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 1267

593 A.2d 1267

527 Pa. 456

In re Petition of Hon. Edward J. BLAKE, President Judge of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, Individually, on Behalf of, and with the Board of Judges, consisting of Judges of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia for relief from the Order of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Dated December 19, 1990 and from actions taken or which may be taken pursuant thereto by Hon. Nicholas P. Papadakos and Hon. Ralph J. Cappy.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Order May 8, 1991.

Opinion June 27, 1991.

Perry S. Bechtle, Conrad O. Kattner, Sally J. Garber, Labrum & Doak, Philadelphia, Pa., for petitioner.

David Donaldson, Chief of Litigation, Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, Philadelphia, Pa., for respondents.

Before NIX, C.J., and LARSEN, FLAHERTY, McDERMOTT, ZAPPALA, PAPADAKOS and CAPPY, JJ.

ORDER

PER CURIAM:

AND NOW, this 8th day of May, 1991, the petition is denied. Opinions to follow.

OPINION OF THE COURT

PER CURIAM:

This petition arises in the context of the most recent in a series of efforts to reform the courts of Philadelphia. Due to serious and ongoing fiscal and administrative problems in the Philadelphia courts, and the apparent inability or unwillingness of that system to correct the growing deficiencies, this court designated two of its own members to oversee the Philadelphia court system. By order dated December 19, 1990, we unanimously appointed Mr. Justice Papadakos to oversee the budgetary restructuring and Mr. Justice Cappy to oversee the administrative reformation.

On April 17, 1991, pursuant to the order granting him "full authority to approve, implement and monitor all changes deemed necessary and proper to their budgets and to insure that such changes bring about fiscal responsibility," Mr. Justice Papadakos directed President Judge Blake to terminate the positions of fifty-nine of the sixty-five staff employees attached to his office. Mr. Justice Papadakos took this action after attempts to have President Judge Blake cooperate with him in the restructuring of his office proved to be unsuccessful.

President Judge Blake, together with most of the judges of the court of common pleas of Philadelphia, has petitioned this court to set aside the December 19, 1990 order appointing Messrs. Justice Papadakos and Cappy to oversee the budgetary and administrative structure of the system, and to repudiate the April 17, 1991 directive of Mr. Justice Papadakos which requires the discharge of fifty-nine members of the court staff.

The petition alleges that both this court's appointment of Mr. Justice Papadakos as an overseer and his directive to terminate staff positions violate the Pennsylvania Constitution. It alleges that the appointment exceeds the supervisory authority granted the Supreme Court in Article V, section 10(a), which provides: "The Supreme Court shall exercise general supervisory and administrative authority over all the courts...." It is petitioners' position that our appointment of Mr. Justice Papadakos to oversee the budget of the Philadelphia court system is a de facto appointment of the Justice as a president judge, violating both Article V, section 5(a), which requires that a president judge be a member of the court over which he presides, and Article V, section 17(d), which prohibits any court from exercising "any power of appointment except as provided in this Constitution." The petition refers to Article V, section 10(d), which provides that the president judge of a court with more than seven judges shall be selected for a five-year term by the members of the court, pursuant to which Judge Blake was duly elected in December 1990, and claims that the judges of the common pleas court have been unconstitutionally disenfranchised by the Supreme Court's action.

Article V of the Pennsylvania Constitution, which defines the judiciary, begins with the words: "The judicial power of the Commonwealth shall be vested in a unified judicial system...." Within this unified system, it is required that "[t]he Supreme Court shall exercise general supervisory and administrative authority over all the courts...." Art. V, § 10(a). In furtherance of that responsibility, this court has for some time monitored the administration of the courts of Philadelphia with increasing unease. It was only after lengthy respite to allow the court to reform itself, with no appreciable improvement, that this court ordered Messrs. Justice Papadakos and Cappy to exercise a more direct supervisory role.

Petitioners' characterization of the appointment of Messrs. Justice Papadakos and Cappy as the de facto appointment of a president judge for the court of common pleas misapprehends two things.

First, as this is a collegial court, every action of the court or of an individual justice is done ultimately with the concurrence of a majority of the court. The December 19, 1990 order assigning to Messrs. Justice Papadakos and Cappy the task of supervising the budgetary and administrative structure of the Philadelphia court system is effective only "until further order of this Court." The court is informed of the actions taken by Messrs. Justice Papadakos and Cappy in furtherance of the December 19 order; if such actions fail to satisfy a majority of this court, a "further order" will issue and any inappropriate action will be countermanded. The challenged action by Mr. Justice Papadakos is emphatically not an inappropriate one.

Second, pursuant to the Constitution and the Judicial Code, it is fully within this Court's authority to prescribe the powers and duties of the president judges and any limitations thereon. The Constitution does no more than establish the office of president judge and the manner in which it shall be filled; it sets out no powers or duties of the office. Although Section 16(f) of the Schedule to Article V adopted in 1967 provided that the president judge "shall be the administrative head of the court and shall supervise the court's judicial business," and Section 16(g) specified that the administrative judges of the court's divisions "shall assist the president judge in supervising the judicial business of the court and shall be responsible to him," those sections were only effective "[u]ntil otherwise provided by law." ¹ In 1976, the General Assembly provided otherwise by law when it enacted the Judicial Code, Title 42 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes. Section 325(e), effective June 27, 1978, sets out the powers and duties of president judges as follows:

Powers of president judge.--Except as otherwise provided or prescribed by this title, by general rule or by order of the governing authority, the president judge of a court shall:

(1) Be the executive and administrative head of the court, supervise the judicial business of the court, promulgate all administrative rules and regulations, make all judicial assignments, and assign and reassign among the personnel of the court available chambers and other physical facilities.

(2) Exercise the powers of the court under section 2301(a)(2) (relating to appointment of personnel).

42 Pa.C.S. § 325(e) (Emphasis added). As the emphasized language makes abundantly clear, the Supreme Court as the governing authority, 42 Pa.C.S. § 102, has the power to alter the duties of president judges described elsewhere in the statute. To the extent that they affected the powers of President Judge Blake, the Order of December 19, 1990 and the April 17, 1991 directive of Mr. Justice Papadakos are consistent with this authority as well as the Court's general supervisory and administrative authority over the unified judicial system, Pa. Const. Art. V, Section 10(a). ²

Additionally, petitioners fail to appreciate the distinction between the duties of a president judge and the duties of administrative judges of the divisions of a court of common pleas. Administrative judges have, since 1980, been appointed by the Supreme Court, and are charged with the administration of their respective divisions. To dispel any vagueness in this distinction, this court entered a directive on April 11, 1986, at No. 55 Judicial Administration Docket No. 1, Eastern District, which specifically defined the duties of administrative judges. The essential portion of that directive requires administrative judges to "appoint and assign all personnel of the division," paragraph 1(A), 509 Pa. XLI, 506 A.2d LI (1986), as well as a host of other supervisory duties to facilitate the speedy and proper administration of justice. That directive was promulgated pursuant to the Pennsylvania Constitution, Article V, section 10(c) and 42 Pa.C.S. § 325(e). The sixty-five member staff under President Judge Blake duplicates the functions performed by the administrative judges and their staffs, and is thus in large part expendable.

For these reasons, we reject petitioners' challenge to the order assigning oversight of the Philadelphia court system to Messrs. Justice Papadakos and Cappy and to the specific directive issued by Mr. Justice Papadakos requiring the discharge of employees from the staff of the president judge. Accordingly, we have entered an order denying the petition.

FLAHERTY, J., joins the PER CURIAM opinion and files a concurring opinion in which PAPADAKOS, J., joins.

PAPADAKOS, J., files a concurring opinion.

NIX, C.J., files a dissenting opinion in which McDERMOTT, J., joins.

McDERMOTT, J., files a dissenting opinion in which NIX, C.J., joins.

FLAHERTY, Justice, concurring.

I write only to state that the position of the petitioners was presented with what legal authority could be mustered in support of it, and, after intense judicial consideration, was deemed totally without merit and frivolous by a majority of the court, including the chief justice who joined the adjudication of denial. Oral argument before this court is not by right and most matters are resolved without it. In fact a matter on the miscellaneous docket...