If your divorce or custody case is coming up soon and you’re in Virginia, it’s not a bad idea to consider going to court to watch a case in action – maybe even a case run by the judge who’ll be presiding over your case, if you know who that will be already.
But – can you just do that? Can you just walk in to a courtroom and watch a hearing?
Let’s talk about it.
Circuit Court Cases
In Virginia, you can walk into any circuit court courtroom and stay as long as you like. You can check the docket – mostly to make sure there’s a family law case (or a case most like the kind you want to see) on. Or, if you’re looking to watch your judge in action, you can see which courtroom your judge is in and just see how things operate.
No one will ask you why you’re there. No one will kick you out. (Unless you’re a witness, then you might have to sit outside or in a private room set aside for witnesses, because the court doesn’t want your testimony colored by other testimony and evidence you might hear during the proceedings.)
You can just … go. No questions asked. And it’s quite a smart thing to do because you
Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court Cases
In juvenile court – or J&D or JDR – you can’t just walk in. Because juveniles are involved, the court hearings themselves are protected. Only parties can attend.
They’re closed. You can’t listen in. You can’t screen your judge ahead of time.
Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. You can’t go.
Are the hearings televised or recorded in any way?
Usually, no. Though occasionally big trials are televised – like the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard case, which was heard in Virginia – but normally circuit court hearings are not. Juvenile court hearings are never televised or recorded.
The only exception is if you have hired a court reporter; you could, after the hearing, request a written transcript. This is a fee-based service, though, and transcripts are NOT cheap. They’re also not just widely available to anyone who wants one.
How can you hold judges (and attorneys and Guardians ad litem) accountable if you can’t watch proceedings?
You can watch in Circuit Court, but not Juvenile Court. So, is that an issue for transparency and accountability? I mean, yeah, of course! There’s no press. No extra witnesses. In most cases, it’ll be just attorneys and Guardian ad litem together in the room with the parties themselves.
Though you could request a transcript, it just … isn’t that compelling. And you could appeal de novo from juvenile court to circuit court, but you’re unlikely to get a review of what the lower court did (or didn’t do).
You can petition to remove a GAL, but it’s risky. You can file a bar complaint against a lawyer, but – without a fair amount of evidence – it’s a tricky process, not to mention the fact that you still have your underlying case ongoing, which likely requires the majority of your attention. With judges, it’s even more difficult. If you feel the judge has a bias, you could ask that the judge recuse him or herself, but … that’s rare. I’ve seen it a few times, and usually when one of the petitioners is an attorney who has been in their courtroom a lot over the years. It’s not that the judge thinks he or she is biased per se, but they want to avoid – ahead of time – the appearance of impropriety. Just because you feel like the judge doesn’t like you… well, I think that’d be super hard.
It’s definitely not a perfect system, but, then again, you probably already know that. What system is perfect? If your case is in circuit court, you could have a front row seat to your judge or to hearings similar to your own. If your case is in juvenile court, you should probably start by having a conversation with your attorney about your judge and what, specifically, you can expect in their courtroom. In a lot of cases, we can prepare our clients pretty well for what to expect because there are only so many judges and we’ve been in front of them many, many times. The only wild cards are if there is, for example, a retired judge handling cases that day or if the issue is a new or novel one that your attorney hasn’t litigated before.
For more information or to schedule a consultation, give our office a call at 757-425-5200.