Today’s post is the last for the week since the School of Government is closed Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday. In honor of the occasion, I want to recognize five criminal-law-related institutions, programs, and people for which I am particularly grateful. District Court A few weeks ago, I attended a dinner hosted by the North Carolina Supreme Court Historical Society to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the North Carolina district courts. The room was chock-full of people I admire: most of them district court judges from districts across the state. One judge joked that he figured he should come since he wouldn’t be around for the 100-year celebration. It’s easy to see why I like these people. North Carolina’s district courts opened in 1966 in six districts and 23 counties, replacing what my former colleague Michael Crowell described in a recent State Bar Journal article as “a scramble of county courts, recorders courts, justices of the peace, and the like.” Over the next four years, district courts opened in the rest of North Carolina. Crowell explains that district courts were part of the then-new statewide unified General Court of Justice, a system that was nearly two decades in the making. My colleague Jim Drennan followed Crowell’s article with his perspective on the evolution of the district court over the past fifty years. Drennan describes the ways in which the court’s jurisdiction has expanded, cases have become more complex, and societal issues addressed in the courts have grown more challenging. [...]
Faculty Coordinators
