Kourlis looks to 'retool' legal system

Former Colorado high court justice starts institute at DU

Karen Abbott, Rocky Mountain News

Published January 18, 2006 at midnight

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Don Quixote is on his way to the University of Denver.

Former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Love Kourlis unveiled her Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System on Tuesday at DU, including news that federal Judge Richard Matsch will be an unpaid consultant to the organization along with other well-known Colorado and national figures.

Kourlis, who resigned from the state's high court this month to launch the institute and become its executive director, said the American legal system is in dire need of repair.

"It is susceptible to abuse by those with the intent, money, power or time to exploit it," she said.

"That it appears complex, intimidating or unfair to many people is unacceptable. Americans are increasingly expecting, and demanding, that the legal system be retooled," she said.

The daughter of the late Colorado Gov. John Love, Kourlis said she knows the institute's mission is a daunting one.

"All of us recognize that this is a huge undertaking and that there are parts of it that are certainly not doable," she said in an interview Monday, before making the institute public Tuesday.

"But by the same token, you have to begin," she said.

"It's time to start. So here we go."

Kourlis said her father collected Don Quixote figures and that she plans to bring one to display in her new office at DU.

Don Quixote, an elderly, idealistic knight who determinedly pursued impossible quests, was the fictional creation of Spanish author, playwright and poet Miguel de Cervantes, whose novel about the knight first was published in the 17th century.

Kourlis said the American legal system must be accessible for everyone and must provide justice that is "impartial, fair, effective, consistent and timely."

She said the system needs to serve American institutions such as the family, commerce and education - not shape them.

The threat of litigation has changed the way such institutions operate in many ways, from the removal of slides from playgrounds for fear of lawsuits over possible injuries to the increased use of prenuptial agreements to divide property in the event of a divorce, she said.

University of Denver Chancellor Robert Coombe said the institute is the only university-based organization in the nation aimed at improving the legal system.

Kourlis hopes that will ensure that its work will be independent, objective and nonpartisan.

Other efforts to repair the legal system have been largely piecemeal, she said.

"Or they have been agenda-driven, coming from a particular perspective that is associated with one set of litigants or another," Kourlis said.

"For example, the tort reform movement has polarized people because it's perceived as being something initiated by defendants in order to curtail liability."

"We have no agenda," Kourlis said, "except to make the system better."

The institute has received a three-year, $3 million operating grant from the Charles and June Gates Family Fund.

One of the fund's trustees, Diane Gates Wallach, a member of the family that founded the Denver-based rubber company and Kourlis' friend since they were in elementary school, spoke at Tuesday's news conference.

"If we accomplish a fraction of our intentions, millions of Americans will benefit from this project," Wallach said.

Kourlis said Monday that another $3 million has been raised from anonymous donors.

She said DU's chancellor emeritus, Daniel Ritchie, suggested the institute to her about 18 months ago. She then worked with Ritchie and Colorado lawyer John Moye to create it.

When she asked Matsch to help, she said, he agreed to be a consultant and "historian."

She said Wallach, who has a business background, hopes the institute will find ways to measure when the legal system is working to achieve efficiency, effectiveness and fairness, and when it's not.

"We may consider such things as litigant satisfaction, consistency with the law and whether the expenditure of attorneys' fees is consistent with what was at stake," she said.

"Nobody has ever really tried to measure before."

Other problems the institute may tackle include:

• Improving access to a legal system that often is viewed as available only to the wealthy and powerful.

• Increasing the timeliness and efficiency of a system that is regarded as complicated, bureaucratic and slow to resolve cases.

• Curtailing abusive legal practices such as extraordinary delay and expense.

• Improving methods for selecting judges.

• Improving the tools available to judges to manage their cases.

Kourlis spent a decade on the Colorado Supreme Court, and before that was a state judge in northwest Colorado.

Her name lately has been mentioned as a possible appointee to both the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal and the U.S. Supreme Court.

But Kourlis said she is committed to the institute.

"I have a lot of aspirations and hopes for this effort, and I have tried to build it in a way that it is poised to make a difference," she said.

"And if I can be the one to spearhead that process of making a difference, it will be everything that I could ever want professionally."

Coming together

Who will run the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System:

• Board of advisers: Colorado Supreme Court Justice Michael Bender; University of Denver Chancellor Robert Coombe; U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas Donohue of Washington, D.C.; Denver attorney Karen Mathis, president-elect of the American Bar Association; Denver attorney John Moye, a past president of the Colorado Bar Association; Philip Howard of New York City, a lawyer and author of the best-seller, The Death of Common Sense, and DU Chancellor Emeritus Daniel Ritchie. More advisers may be announced later.

• Unpaid consultant and historian: Colorado U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch, who gained national attention when he presided over the Denver trials of Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in 1997 and 1998.

• Staff: Executive Director Rebecca Kourlis, former Colorado Supreme Court Justice; Assistant Director Pamela Gagel, a lawyer and former Denver District Court magistrate; and Policy Analyst Mac Danford, former clerk of the Colorado Supreme Court.

• Funding: The Charles and June Gates Family Fund has contributed a three-year, $3 million operating grant. Other donors who wish to remain anonymous have contributed another $3 million.

• Location and affiliation: The University of Denver

abbottk@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5188

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