IN PRINT: NJ Supreme Court Justice on The Great Recession

New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Stuart Rabner spoke about the effects of the Great Recession on New Jersey's judicial system in a public talk on March 3. Rabner said that the justice system can help alleviate the suffering of residents, though he added that layoffs make this task trickier.Rabner, a 1982 graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School, gave the School’s annual John Marshall Harlan ’20 Lecture in Robertson Hall.Rabner explained that a statewide mandatory mediation program was implemented in response to the staggering increase in the number of contested foreclosure cases. In the past year, the number of foreclosure cases has tripled with nearly five thousand cases being filed per month, he said. Now, judges require a mediation session before a foreclosure case can come to court.

“The goal is to get borrowers and lenders to sit together at a table to try to work through the problem that exists in their contractual relationship and see if we can stave off foreclosures,” Rabner said. “The role of the court system is to ensure that there is a neutral forum where individual rights of both sides are respected and protected.”

Read the entire story here.