Shabaz reflects on ‘rocket docket’ legacy

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I left a message requesting a short telephone interview with federal District Judge John C. Shabaz, in the wake of his announcement that he’ll be assuming senior status when a successor is confirmed, on or before Jan. 20, 2009.

The former chief judge of the Western District, and 25-year federal jurist in the Madison-based court, called back within 10 minutes.

Not surprising, given that Shabaz and his court have been dubbed the “rocket docket.”

The man abhors needless delay.

Shabaz says he first heard the nickname “rocket docket” in an elevator in Chicago, from one of his colleagues. That was in the 1980s.

He takes great pride in the efficient case management for which he’s known, and says it’s “nice to hear” that some practitioners believe this efficiency has become institutionalized within the Western District.

It’s a philosophy he formed while at Marquette University Law School in the mid-1960s.

He asked one of his professors there how long it took a case to be processed across the street in Milwaukee County Circuit Court. He was told it might languish as long as three years.

“I thought that was horrendous at the time, and I always did as a lawyer, too. I practiced for 25 years,” he says.

“We have scarce judicial resources, and we ought to make the best of them,” Shabaz continues. “We as judges are asked to make just, quick determinations, and I think we ought to do that, for the sake of both the taxpayers and the people who are actually paying for their litigation. I believe they should get first-class treatment.”

One of the tools he uses for case management – and he’s famous for these, too – is frequent status conferences, motion hearings and/or pretrials, which commence as early as 7 a.m. every Wednesday, to check in with the lawyers and parties and help move cases along. As a practitioner in the Milwaukee area prior to ascending to the bench, he became accustomed to “Motion Monday” in the civil courts, but says he’s always been more comfortable with doing that type of work mid-week.

As for predicting who will be his successor, Shabaz won’t hazard a guess. “I’ll stay out of it. I had enough trouble with my own confirmation,” he quips. Moreover, he won’t be spending a lot of time training a new judge. “I’m not a teacher – I’m a preacher,” he says, explaining that he’ll expound the virtues of effective case management to any judge who is interested, but he has found that not all are.

He says he has no plans to slow down and will likely continue with a full caseload once he takes senior status, although he might be traveling slightly more than in the past. There will be no ventures into alternative dispute resolution, as some retired judges have done; he likes where he’s at.

“Hopefully, everything’s going to go well around here for the next 25 or 50 years.”