Utah Court Rules – Published for Comment
The Supreme Court and Judicial Council invite comments about amending these rules. To view the proposed amendment, click on the rule number.
To submit a comment or view the comments of others, click on “Continue Reading.” To submit a comment, scroll down to the “Leave a Reply” section, and type your comment in the “Comment” field. Type your name and email address in the designated fields and click “Post Comment.”
Comments cannot be acknowledged, but all will be considered. Comments are saved to a buffer for review before publication.
Posted: April 11, 2023
CJA11-0107.Open and Public Meetings. NEW. This rule describes when Supreme Court committees should hold open meetings and defines allowable reasons for closed meetings. This rule is consistent with the philosophy of the Open and Public Meetings Act.
A good rule, overdue.
The ACLU of Utah supports the expedited adoption of Rule 11-107. As a general matter, we believe that government business should be conducted in an open and transparent manner to the fullest extent possible. The public should have the ability to freely observe and understand how and why government policies and rules are formed. This access promotes participatory democracy overall, and facilitates policies and rules that are respectful of rights and liberties and accountability for those that are not. From organizational experience, we have seen that the ability to provide comment and feedback through open meeting policies allows stakeholders impacted by prospective changes to bring to light specific practical challenges that may arise in the implementation of policy changes and work alongside policymakers to work towards solutions that meet the needs of government and impacted communities.
Specific to Rule 11-107, the Utah public has a keen interest in the rules governing the conduct and substance of Utah state civil and criminal proceedings, as well as the rules for legal professionals. Each state court case or proceeding is of upmost importance to the people involved, from minor disputes involving property to criminal proceedings that could end in a prison sentence. In every case, rules meant to ensure fairness in process and substance are essential to public trust and guaranteed by the federal and Utah constitutions. Requiring that the advisory committees tasked with assisting the Court in forming Court rules have open meetings will promote healthy participation by the public in how these rules are formed and increase public confidence that the rules were made fairly. The ability to close meetings appears to be appropriately limited under the proposed rule, with a strong default of open meetings. For all these reasons, we support this recently adopted rule.