The Justice Tech Download —

JT/DL: Court Innovation Is Middleware

The article argues that court case management systems (CMS) are the bottleneck preventing courts from leveraging their massive data streams, citing an Oklahoma pilot where a simple middleware layer cut jail time for low‑level defendants. It explains that most CMS APIs are undocumented, fragile, and lock courts into proprietary vendors. Middleware—an independent software layer that standardizes data and exposes modern APIs—can break this lock‑in, enabling rapid deployment of tools like text‑message reminders. The piece calls for the Court Innovation Fund to study and scale middleware models such as CourtStack across the nation.