Fifty Years of Justice: A History of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida by James M. Denham (review)

The U.S. Constitution requires a Supreme Court but not federal trial courts. The first Congress nevertheless wasted no time in creating federal district courts, believing they would be critical to the enforcement of federal law. That judgment is amply confirmed by James M. Denham’s legal and institutional history of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida from its creation in 1962 until 2012. Denham uses court records, press reports, and interviews to generate an interesting narrative of the important cases, personalities, and institutional developments of the busy federal trial court that has jurisdiction over Florida from Fort Myers in the south to Jacksonville in the north. Denham’s core theme is the constant straggle of dedicated but chronically understaffed judges to do justice in the face of a continually evolving docket, but his narrative also tracks Florida’s development from a small, Deep South state in the 1950s to the economically dynamic and cosmopolitan Florida of today.

The book is roughly organized by presidential administration, though thematic chapters regularly extend through multiple presidencies. It begins with Congress’s decision to create the Middle District in 1962 in response to the rapid growth of south and central Florida. Denham describes briefly but well the desegregation orders, civil rights protests, Ku Klux Klan violence, and conflicts with state law enforcement authorities that produced sensational cases in the 1960s, without ignoring the ever-flowing stream of conventional cases. The arrival of the Richard Nixon administration saw new questions about busing schoolchildren and a new emphasis on “law and order” that made organized crime a particular target and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act an important tool.

The 1970s produced important institutional innovations that helped alleviate the heavy caseload generated by Florida’s growth. Magistrate judges arrived in the Middle District in 1971 to help resolve pretrial motions, preside over misdemeanor trials, and oversee other important procedural issues. Bankruptcy judges arrived in 1978 to help stem the rising tide of business and personal insolvency. With Ronald Reagan’s election, judges of a more conservative stripe arrived. So, too, did the war on drugs and Florida’s unwilling emergence as a primary corridor of the drug trade. The resulting explosion of drug cases slowed but did not stop the administration of justice in other areas, including the growing number of employment discrimination and environmental cases.

Later chapters describe the trials of violent, homegrown, antigovernment extremists; the continued efforts to stay ahead of an avalanche of bankruptcy proceedings; and the district’s continued involvement in the desegregation of public schools. The court’s oversight of desegregation in one Florida county lasted from 1962 until 2010. The district avoided much, but not all, of the litigation over the 2000 presidential election and then turned its attention to the issues of the new century: Patriot Act prosecutions and terrorism cases joined the continual parade of crime, fraud, and civil actions.

After its creation in 1962, the Middle District grew into one of the nation’s busiest trial courts. It began with three district judges but today includes forty-nine district, magistrate, and bankruptcy judges supported by United States Attorneys and the U.S. Marshals Service. Their efforts to fairly apply federal law in the face of a constantly growing caseload are well chronicled. An appendix provides a complete list of the officials who served in those important roles. Each of those officials, the Florida lawyers who have likely heard some, but certainly not all, of these stories, and those interested in the role federal trial courts played in Florida’s postwar history will profit from this book.