My recent column about my experience in traffic court generated more reader feedback than any post in recent memory. It seems that everyone has their own traffic-court story—many quite different from mine.
In fact, it appears that my experience in Summit City Municipal Court, in Union County, New Jersey, might be something of an outlier—at least in terms of what most traffic courts are like in the United States. So I wanted to write a follow-up post to correct any misimpressions—and to share what I learned from two especially valuable sources, a municipal prosecutor and a law professor.
Let’s start with the prosecutor, who has been handling traffic cases here in New Jersey for almost two decades (and asked to remain anonymous, because they weren’t authorized to speak on the record). I’ve formatted it as a Q&A.
Was my write-up a fairly accurate and representative description of both the law and process of New Jersey traffic court?
Yes. In terms of the substantive law, your judge stated things correctly: most of the defenses and justifications are limited to Title 2C (Criminal Code) and don’t apply to Title 39 (Motor Vehicle Code). As for process, your case involved two new innovations that are being used to get away from the “cattle calls” of old: the online plea, and a virtual court session (via Zoom).
Was what I described similar to what you’d see in traffic court in another municipality or county in New Jersey, or are there significant variations in traffic court even within New Jersey?
The procedure is largely the same across New Jersey. In the larger towns, the judge and prosecutors are full-time employees, unlike your judge, and don’t have their own law practices. Some communities have joint courts—your city, Summit, shares its municipal court with New Providence and Berkeley Heights—but for the most part, each town has its own court. There’s some variation in terms of whether the cases are heard in-person or online. The other variation is how generous the plea offers are, with rural and suburban communities tending to be stricter than the urban areas.
Could hiring a lawyer have gotten me an outright dismissal of my ticket?
No. Hiring an attorney might have gotten you a more generous plea offer than what you were offered, but outright dismissals are extremely rare.
My prosecutor seemed pretty inflexible. In between getting the ticket and the trial, there was a pretrial hearing of sorts, where I tried to finagle a better plea deal out of him—but he stuck to his guns and just repeated his original offer.
It’s the nature of the beast: you have to try to be as consistent as possible, for several reasons. Your flooded-basement story has hundreds of permeations—I really should have started keeping a list so that I could write a book—and we’ve heard them all before. We don’t have the time to listen to them, and if we started dismissing tickets for those reasons, it would be chaos. And being consistent between defendants also insulates us from allegations that we show favoritism to any particular group.
Could hiring a lawyer have gotten me an offer to plead to a non-moving violation—which I’m guessing would help me in terms of my insurance rates? A friend in Ohio who got a traffic ticket was allowed to plead guilty to an offense that wouldn’t carry points or affect their insurance, like having a broken taillight—even though there was no factual basis for such a plea.
Perhaps—but I rarely turn a moving violation into a non-moving violation. I should also state that I am willfully ignorant about insurance points. I ultimately answer to the Attorney General, not the Commissioner of Insurance—and I stay in my lane. If you have any questions on insurance, call your insurance company!
Another reason I wanted to go to trial is that I was hoping I might get out of the ticket if the police officer failed to show. Would my case have been automatically dismissed if the cop hadn’t come to “court”?
It depends. Typically, if the officer doesn’t show on a minor ticket, it’s dismissed. If it’s something more significant, the state can ask for an adjournment, and the defense can ask that the case be marked “try or dismiss.” There are speedy-trial cases out there, and then it becomes an exercise in counting the days the case was delayed due to the defense and the number of days it was delayed due to the state.
So it seems my experience was fairly typical in terms of traffic court in New Jersey. But New Jersey is just one of 50 states—and it appears that in most other states, (1) traffic court is much more informal; (2) lawyers, judges, and legal arguments play a much smaller role in the process; and (3) judges have far more discretion in terms of how to handle cases, which they often wield to advance their own notions of “fairness” (independent of sources of formal law like statutes and case law).
That was my takeaway after reading the leading academic article on traffic court, Traffic Courts, written by Professor Justin Weinstein-Tull and published in the California Law Review in 2024. I’m going to share with you the abstract, along with excerpts from the piece and my commentary. But for those of you don’t want to take that deep a dive into traffic court, here are some quick, big-picture thoughts that Professor Weinstein-Tull shared with me after reading my post:
I found your post really interesting. I love hearing about people’s experiences in traffic courts and informal courts generally—one great benefit of studying these courts is that almost everyone has a funny/quirky/scary story to share.
I’m not surprised your judge took a more legalistic approach—nothing about traffic courts really surprises me! From what I’ve learned, traffic judges take a wide variety of approaches. Some are sticklers for the law (or at least what they understand the law to be), like yours; others less so. I’ve interviewed traffic judges who do take an equitable approach—judges who will waive fines where the defendant was speeding because of an emergency like yours, or if the defendant can’t afford the fine, etc. Some traffic judges believe they have great discretion; others don’t.
New Jersey requires its municipal-court judges to have practiced law for five years before becoming judges, so it makes sense that your judge took a more legalistic approach. That said, I’ve found that even judges within a single state and with similar educational backgrounds vary in their approach, so I also wouldn’t have been surprised if you had gotten a different NJ judge—also with a law degree—more sympathetic to your situation.
In confirmation of Weinstein-Tull’s suspicion that I might have gotten a different result from a different judge, even in New Jersey, here’s a story I received from a contact on LinkedIn (also a resident of the Garden State):
Lifelong NJ resident here. You can get such tickets dismissed by many judges. In Elizabeth, I had a ticket dismissed when I told the judge that my mother was sick. He said: “I would speed as well for my mother.” He just dismissed the whole thing—and told the officer who gave me the ticket to be more aware of the high crime in the area.
Note that Elizabeth is a more urban area—where, according to my prosecutor, the powers-that-be tend to go easier on traffic offenses than the authorities in suburban places like Summit.
Back to the good professor:
There’s not much oversight of traffic courts (the sheer number of cases makes meaningful oversight difficult), so traffic judges generally operate fairly out of sight. As a result, and because of the great number of judges who hear these cases, there’s just extraordinary diversity in how these courts operate.
We can (and should!) ask: are we comfortable with that diversity? What would make us uncomfortable? And what can we do about it?
My thanks to Professor Weinstein-Tull for these reflections—as well as for his fascinating article, which is definitely worth a read. Here’s the abstract:
Traffic courts are deeply important, but we know almost nothing about what goes on inside them. This is a problem for at least three reasons. First, traffic courts resolve over half of all cases brought into our justice system each year. Understanding how traffic courts work is thus crucial for understanding how courts themselves work. Second, traffic courts profoundly affect people’s lives. Monetary penalties from traffic court can cause people to go into debt sometimes so severe that it can take years to recover financially. Suspended driver’s licenses—another potential penalty—also have catastrophic effects on people’s livelihoods. Third, traffic courts occupy a key role in the justice system: they both sit atop our system of traffic policing and also fund state judicial branches and other state and local programs. Traffic courts enable a massive transfer of capital from motorists—disproportionately Black and Latino motorists—to the government. In short, if you care about courts, humans, or justice, you should care about traffic courts.
This Article provides the first comprehensive study of traffic courts. It makes four principal observations about their inner workings. First, traffic courts are diverse institutions—they vary by state—but some generalizations can be made. Second, traffic courts tend to be informal, lawyerless places that do not engage closely with procedural rules or other traditional indicia of legality. Third, traffic judges—often non-lawyers themselves—wield extraordinary discretion during proceedings. Fourth, traffic courts show us that our justice system is far less consistent and far more varied than we might imagine. Case outcomes rest more on lay notions of fairness than on legalistic guidance—a feature that carries the benefit of incorporating community norms into the legal system but also the risk of violating litigants’ rights.
Traffic courts also encourage us to think differently about the nature of the justice system. In particular, traffic courts present new categorical distinctions that we have not historically used to evaluate courts: between precedential and nonprecedential courts, and between more judicial and more administrative courts. This Article argues that these distinctions suggest novel ways to reform and oversee both traffic courts and the justice system more broadly.
Most of you will probably want to stop reading here. But for those of you who want to go down quite a rabbit hole—I was (pleasantly) surprised by the interest level in traffic courts—I’m going to pull out excerpts from Traffic Courts that I found particularly noteworthy, then add my commentary.
Let’s go for a drive, shall we?
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Near the start of his article, Weinstein-Tull offered statistics on the sheer number of traffic cases across the country:
The total number of [traffic] cases in the justice system is simply vast. The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) collects data on state case filings, and although not every state reports its case numbers, NCSC provides national estimates. NCSC estimates that in 2021, there were 63.3 million cases filed in state courts around the country. Of those, NCSC estimates that 47%, or 29.9 million cases, were traffic cases. (By contrast, 421,860 cases were filed in federal court in 2021, total.) ….
The dominance of traffic cases is largely present at a state-by-state level as well. Thirty-four states provided publicly available case information that identifies the number of traffic cases filed in 2021. In those states, the proportion of traffic cases ranged from 8.9% of the total number of incoming cases filed (Massachusetts) to 76.8% of all cases filed (New Jersey).
Ah, New Jersey. I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that my home state, which some view as one big highway—“what exit?”—has the highest percentage of traffic cases. The volume might also explain why New Jersey takes a relatively formal, legalistic approach to traffic violations; as I wrote in my original post, “given the sheer volume of cases passing through traffic court, mechanical application of clear legal rules is a must. Traffic court would grind to a halt if the judges sat around trying to ‘do equity’ in every case.”
But New Jersey is just one state among many—and so YMMV, “Your Mileage May Vary,” in terms of your own traffic-court experience. As Weinstein-Tull put it:
Like most highly decentralized institutions, traffic courts operate differently between states, and sometimes operate differently even within states. State court systems differ from one another in multiple ways: they have different court organizations, different procedural rules, and different substantive law. This diversity is a methodological challenge for descriptive work on local institutions.
Traffic courts, although common along some dimensions in many states, do not all operate the same. Traffic courts in California and Arizona, as an example, differ in important, structural ways. California has consolidated its judicial system, so its superior courts resolve all trial-level matters, including traffic cases. Arizona, by contrast, operates both general jurisdiction and limited jurisdiction trial courts (with different operating procedures and judge qualifications for each), and only the limited jurisdiction courts—including municipal courts and justice of the peace courts—resolve traffic cases. There are other differences as well. California judges must possess law degrees; Arizona judges who resolve traffic cases need not be lawyers. Trial procedure in traffic cases in Arizona is informal; less so in California.
As mentioned, I dealt with a prosecutor and a judge when I went to traffic court in New Jersey. But that might have been unusual, per Weinstein-Tull:
In general, traffic courts are informal courts. This is true in two primary ways. First, traffic courts are legally informal. They are largely lawyerless courts. Defendants rarely bring counsel; prosecutors almost never attend. Many states permit non-lawyers to judge traffic cases, so traffic court judges themselves are often not lawyers. In fact, many states permit non-judges—like hearing officers and administrative officers—to resolve traffic cases. Because of the non-legal nature of the parties and decision-maker, traffic court proceedings take a more informal, nonlegal tone. Second, many states legally require procedural informality in traffic court via statutes and court rules that require informality broadly, eliminate rules of evidence for traffic proceedings, or set other specific procedures that encourage informality.
Which states allow for non-judge adjudicators? Check out the appendix to Weinstein-Tull’s article, which contains a 50-state survey. According to his research, 23 states permit non-judges to resolve traffic cases.
When I went to traffic court, my judge told me that he did not have the ability to dismiss my speeding ticket based on my defense of necessity (rushing home to address an emergency—a flooding basement). He explained to me that in New Jersey, which defenses are cognizable is a matter of law—law that judges most follow.
But that’s in New Jersey. After posting my story, I heard from readers in other states—including Maryland, Ohio, and Rhode Island—who told me that traffic judges in their states enjoy much more freedom to do as they please. And their anecdotal claims are consistent with Weinstein-Tull’s research:
Traffic judges possess abundant discretion over the outcomes of their judgments. In the words of one traffic judge, traffic judges have “an awful lot of leeway.” Deciding on the outcome of the case is one of the most important parts of a traffic judge’s job. Unsurprisingly, states empower traffic judges to make those decisions in different ways. But a core similarity is that traffic judges in most states have statutorily granted flexibility to craft the fine they feel is appropriate.
Once a traffic judge determines that a party is legally responsible for the traffic violation, they must decide on the fine to be applied. A small number of states provide strict statutory fines for traffic judges to apply. Other states provide either statutory fine ranges or statutory maximums and task traffic judges with choosing a penalty within the range or no greater than the maximum.
Many states provide traffic judges with even more discretion, however, by permitting them to lower the fines beyond statutory minimums or eliminate them altogether. A number of states permit traffic judges to suspend penalties if the penalty would be a financial hardship for the defendant to pay…. Many other states simply provide blanket authority to waive penalties….
[S]tates provide little guidance to judges in exercising their discretion. Though some states do mention driving history, most states simply provide penalty ranges and leave it to the individual traffic judges to determine. Others provide vague guidance, like that “the trial court may reduce or eliminate the award in the interest of justice.”
One of my readers wrote to me, “Too bad you weren’t in Rhode Island. Judge Frank Caprio dispensed equity all the time. See generally Caught in Providence.”
Judge Caprio makes an appearance in Weinstein-Tull’s article:
There is a show called Caught in Providence, featuring a man named Frank Caprio, that highlights cases he hears as Chief Municipal Judge in Providence, Rhode Island. Although he is not exclusively a traffic judge, many of the cases the judge hears are traffic related. Despite the gotcha-style title, the show is kindhearted and highlights cases where he solves problems in compassionate and creative ways. Judge Caprio is an empathetic, older man who listens to the people who appear before him. The show has produced a number of viral videos featuring traffic adjudication—no small feat—including one particularly heartwarming clip where a ninety-six-year-old man was ticketed for speeding while driving his sixty-year-old son to get medical care for cancer. Addressing the tearful defendant, Judge Caprio wished the best of health to him and his son and dismissed the charge.
Judge Caprio doesn’t seem to consult statute books or case law; he does what he thinks is right. In an interview, he said: “I think I should take into consideration whether somebody is sick and whether their mother died and whether they have kids who are starving…. I don’t wear a badge under my robe. I wear a heart under my robe.”
Weinstein-Tull’s research suggests that Judge Caprio isn’t alone in taking this equitable, fairness-focused approach:
I asked the traffic judges I interviewed how they exercised their discretion. The answers I got were varied, but what I found was that the predominant value that these judges use in making decisions—both procedural and substantive—is simply fairness….
As I learned, however, fairness is a capacious term that means different things to different judges…..
[Some] judges described a form of situational or fact-dependent fairness. One said that she looked for mitigating and aggravating circumstances in the facts of the case, like driving with a passenger who was in labor, that would allow her to reduce the defendant’s penalty. Another mentioned that a medical emergency might justify reducing the penalty.
Sigh. It really does sound as if outside New Jersey, I would have had a decent chance of getting the ticket dismissed—or I at least would have been able to plead to an offense that wouldn’t affect my insurance.
Weinstein-Tull then identified the advantages and disadvantages of relatively informal, fairness-focused traffic courts. Let’s start with the advantages:
Because traffic judges have significant discretion both procedurally and substantively, they have the authority to shade an unusual amount of their jurisprudence with their own vision of fairness (and, as I described above, that is exactly what they do). That vision of fairness incorporates community notions of the judicial role into the court, creating the potential for a form of representative government.
Traffic courts also vindicate what I have in previous work called the descriptive benefit of federalism: They “serve a descriptive function by putting on display, for anyone willing to look, the administration of justice. In this reading, the deeply parochial nature of local courts is a benefit, not a cost.” More so than any other court, traffic courts show us the justice that we actually possess, not the justice we believe we possess.
Turning to the disadvantages:
As one part-time traffic judge—who also happened to be a practicing lawyer in traffic courts—described, a set of structural and procedural factors join to stack the deck against traffic court defendants. These include many of the features that make the proceedings informal: the lack of pre-trial discovery; the non-applicability of the rules of evidence; the overall informality of the process; the burden of proof as only a preponderance of the evidence; and the fact that whereas defendants are often appearing for the first time, the police officers are seasoned veterans. As he put it, “It’s a simplified system, but it’s streamlined for the state and against the defendant. It’s a high burden to overcome to the procedural and structural design of the system.”
There is thus a deep concern that the things that set traffic courts apart from both federal and state general jurisdiction courts—in particular, simplified rules, expanded judge discretion, diversity, infrequent oversight, and the lack of lawyers in the courtroom—work against the interests of traffic-court defendants and create the possibility that traffic-court operations will violate basic constitutional rights.
Along these lines, a friend of mine in a neighboring town in New Jersey told me about her own (awful) experience in traffic court:
I contested a ticket once, in Berkeley…. The judge was on a high dais, probably 8 feet above me. He was mean and condescending. I didn’t really understand the procedure because nobody explained it, and he shouted at me to start talking then shouted at me to stop talking. The message was sort of like, “Didn’t you understand from the ticket that you are a horrible person? No? Then I’m telling you again!”
It was a terrible experience. It was set up to make defendants feel small and shamed, and it worked.
My experience, in the traffic court of a nearby town, was far more positive. My judge was patient and courteous, and he explained things quite clearly. Although I was disappointed that I couldn’t get my ticket dismissed, I was grateful for my proverbial “day in court.”
And this contrast between two experiences, in nearby towns in New Jersey, reflects my biggest problem with traffic court: there’s so much inconsistency in the process, both within states and across states, that it’s incredibly hard for litigants to make informed decisions about what to do in their cases.
Should I accept the prosecutor’s plea offer? Should I go to trial? If I go to trial, what arguments can the judge consider, and what arguments are off the table? So many of us are flying—or driving—blind, so to speak.
When I was trying to figure out these questions for myself, I wandered around in a wilderness of Reddit and Quora discussions, some of them several years old, often involving participants who were not from New Jersey (or who didn’t reveal where they were from). This is part of why I wanted to write about traffic court, and why I was glad to come across Professor Weinstein-Tull’s article: there just isn’t enough credible, reliable information about traffic courts and how they work.
As someone who writes about the legal profession, I realize I could have hired an experienced traffic-court lawyer to guide me through the process. But would it have been worth it to hire a lawyer in a case like mine, involving a $107 fine and two points on my license? A friend here in Summit who hired a lawyer to resolve a traffic ticket spent around $500 on the lawyer and another $440 in fines and court costs—and did not get a complete dismissal, but did get a better plea deal (on a ticket involving two violations and four points, which the lawyer got down to zero).
To sum up, there’s a serious lack of transparency surrounding traffic courts. As Weinstein-Tull wrote:
Traffic courts pose a second-order worry as well: we simply do not have a good enough idea of what goes on inside these courts to assure ourselves that they are just. No one pays attention to what happens inside of traffic courts: not academics, not the media, not advocates. State court administrative offices often pay little attention to the goings on in hyperlocal courts like the ones traffic cases are heard in. Appellate courts provide little oversight because appeals rates from traffic court are minuscule…. Without more observation of some kind—be it media attention, scholarly attention, or administrative attention—we have little basis to gauge the fairness or unfairness of traffic courts.
This opacity, joined with the vast discretion that traffic judges possess, the informality of the traffic courtroom, and the low societal salience of any individual traffic case, is a dangerous combination. We have little certainty that traffic judges will reach the correct results, few rules and regulations to provide precise guidance in many states, and almost no oversight of traffic judge conduct and decisions. And with few lawyers present, litigants may not understand that they are experiencing unjust conditions.
What’s the likelihood of seeing improvement on this score? I’m not optimistic. Given the relatively low stakes involved in any single case, there aren’t strong incentives for improving the regularity and transparency of traffic-court proceedings.
At the end of the day, you can’t fight City Hall—or traffic court.