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10 Wash. U. J.L. & Pol'y 63 (2002)
Courting Disorder: Some Thoughts on Community Courts

handle is hein.journals/wajlp10 and id is 67 raw text is: Courting Disorder: Some Thoughts on Community Courts Anthony C. Thompson* INTRODUCTION Specialized community courts' have burst onto the judicial landscape almost overnight. To many, these courts seem a logical extension of the drug courts that proliferated in the 1980s. Drug courts successfully departed from traditional court operations by narrowing their focus to the treatment of drug problems and the criminal conduct that tends to flow from addiction. Such specialized concentration both targeted the defendant's problems and allowed professionals working in the system to develop a level of expertise that attends such focused work. But the community courts that have recently emerged are a different breed. These courts have a wide focus-perhaps too wide. They seek to address complex issues ranging from domestic violence to mental health. In the process, community courts have begun to utilize the coercive power of the judiciary in ways that raise questions about their propriety and necessity. Interestingly, these concerns have not surfaced in the literature examining community courts. Whereas drug courts have * Professor of Clinical Law, New York University. J. D. 1985 Harvard University; B.A. 1982 Northwestern University. I am grateful to the Students and Faculty of Washington University School of Law, particularly the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) and the Clinical Education Program for inviting me to be the 2002 Martin Luther King Commemorative Speaker. I would like to thank Professors Randy Hertz, Jerry Lopez and especially Kim Taylor- Thompson for their comments on early drafts of this Article. I would also like to thank Kate Sawyer for her invaluable research assistance and Dulcie Ingleton for her administrative support. I gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Filomen D' Agostino and Max Greenberg Research Fund at the New York University School of Law. This Article was prepared as part of Washington University School of Law's 2001-2002 Public Interest Law Speaker Series. 1. Community courts and problem-solving courts are terms used interehangeably. See, e.g., infra note 3.

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