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Chief Justice Kittredge urges magistrate reform, asks legislature for four circuit judges
Summary
Chief Justice John W. Kittredge told a joint assembly the judiciary needs magistrate reform, modest fee increases, and four additional resident circuit judges; he cited large caseload growth and recent reductions in older-case backlogs as evidence the system is strained but improving.
Chief Justice John W. Kittredge addressed a joint assembly of the South Carolina General Assembly, asking lawmakers to back modest magistrate-court reforms, consider a small increase in filing fees to support county magistrate salaries and to fund four additional resident circuit judges targeted in the judiciary's budget request.
Kittredge framed the issues as both structural and human. He said the state's courts have recorded more than 9,000,000 case filings across recent years and pointed to measurable progress on older-case backlogs even as filings rise: criminal-case backlogs declined about 16.9% and indicted criminal cases older than three years fell roughly 17.6% between 2024 and 2025, he said. On the civil side, he said filings rose about 28% but civil cases pending more than two years fell about 37%.
"Magistrate reform is needed, and I'm hopeful of a positive and productive dialogue with you," Kittredge said, urging lawmakers to address long-standing pay and uniformity problems in the magistrate bench. He told the assembly that some full-time magistrate salaries range from about $37,105 to nearly $156,000, a disparity he called incompatible with a uniform magistrate system.
Kittredge also described a judicial-infrastructure effort to gather county-level data with clerks of court and said the judiciary is seeking to assign judges and court resources where they are most needed. He urged the legislature to support four additional resident circuit judges, a step he said would modestly raise South Carolina's judges-per-100,000-population ratio toward neighboring states.
The chief justice illustrated the judiciary's real-world impact with a veterans-treatment-court example, describing a veteran, Mark Atkinson, who after a DUI arrest entered treatment court, got sober and credited court staff and a caring judge with saving his life.
Kittredge closed by thanking members of the General Assembly for past support and offering to work with lawmakers on specific reforms. He said Representative Pope had filed magistrate-related legislation in the House and that he supported continued interbranch cooperation on those proposals.
The address was delivered at the joint assembly; no formal vote resulted from the speech itself. The chief justice urged follow-up committee work and individual meetings with legislators to flesh out statutory and budgetary changes.
