A highly diverse panel of competing players in the Philadelphia criminal-justice system on Friday began the difficult job of finding a consensus on how to reform the city's troubled courts. In its first session, the two dozen volunteers named to a special Pennsylvania Senate advisory panel seemed to agree that far too many cases were collapsing without any decision on their merits. David Sonenshein, professor at Temple's Beasley School of Law, agreed to serve as its chairman. John Goldkamp, a criminologist at Temple who has served for decades as a key adviser to the Philadelphia courts, cautioned his colleagues not to isolate themselves within their areas of expertise: "We have a number of symptoms of dysfunction that are interrelated," he said.