Comment from Davenport, Teresa, None

My comment is submitted as a private citizen who happens to work as an ALJ for Social Security. I have previously worked as a federal prosecutor. I was in the United States Navy and Navy Reserve and served as the Chief Reserve Military Judge. As such, I have some experience with trying to manage a docket. The agency should not tell judges when, where, and how many cases they will do. Justice is not a production system; it a process of fairness to people. It is not open to numbers and quotas and manufactured time. Each judge is different and each case is different. Therefore, no agency person can create a fair system wherein they slot different judges into an agency created time to hear a case. Each claimant is different, each case is different, the representatives are different and the experts are different. You cannot predict how long they need to testify. You cannot predict how long or how many experts you may need. You do not know how many witnesses a claimant may bring. Judges know how long they need based on their experience and their own history of doing cases. We are here to give a full and fair hearing. Anything less is not what we promise the claimants. Therefore, the agency docket person who tells each judge that they must do X number of cases in X hour or less would deny the full and fair process that we promise. Only the judge knows how long it takes to conduct the hearing that they believe is fair and impartial to the claimant.