ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the general background and selected aspects of court reform. It explores the personal and organizational stimuli of reshaping and some details of selected reform developments in significant periods over twentieth century. Reformers have promoted structural and management changes in both. Federal court reform issues have included better management of cases through increased numbers of judges, better realignment of districts, development of professional court managers, and the creation of special courts. The new age of widespread political reform was more than the separate, populist movement of farmers; it was a broader aggregation of political interests, or progressivism. The sociologist Max Weber's differentiation of bureaucracy as the highest form of rational government gave legitimacy to the systematic replacement of traditional governmental structures with a reform model. Max Weber's "model bureaucracy" has also been a powerful overlay in the debate about court reform.
