Gants addresses letter to bar amid public health crisis

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Two days after the Supreme Judicial Court suspended non-emergency in-person appearances in state courts, Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants on March 19 addressed a letter to the Massachusetts bar amid the COVID-19 public health crisis.

“Judge Learned Hand famously suggested that there should be a commandment, ‘Thou shalt not ration justice,'” Gants wrote. “In recent days, as a result of the public health emergency arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, our Massachusetts courts (and courts around the nation) have had little choice but to ration justice.”

Gants told the bar that the measures taken to “ration justice” are intended “to focus our limited judicial resources on avoiding serious and immediate harm and to make sure that we and our justice system survive to see a better time.”

“We will get through this, both as a Commonwealth and as a court system, whether it be in weeks or months, but it will not be pretty,” he wrote. “We know many are being hurt: defendants in custody awaiting trial, crime victims awaiting closure to their ordeal, and children in limbo awaiting custody or adoption decisions, to name only a few. And we know we must do what we can to limit their pain.”

In dealing with the crisis, “we will gain new appreciation of the importance of a functioning system of justice — for the preservation of our rights, for the peaceful resolution of disputes, and for a healthy, growing economy,” Gants said.

Noting questions he had received from lawyers about how to help during the crisis, Gants invited members of the bar to “work with our courts to figure out how we can find new ways to protect the most vulnerable, preserve individual rights, resolve disputes, and somehow keep the wheels of justice turning in the midst of this frightening pandemic.”

“I would love to possess the wisdom and creativity to suggest to you what these improvisations should be, but sadly I do not,” he wrote. “I look to your collective wisdom and creativity to devise such improvisations, and try them out.”

The full text of the letter can be read here.