A century ago, this state’s growing need for a more efficient and modern justice system resulted in the creation of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court.

The First Judicial Department of the Appellate Division has for one hundred years served the communities of Manhattan and the Bronx. Now we commemorate the Centennial Anniversary of the Court’s founding in 1896.

From its beginning the Court has been closely intertwined with the life of New York City, a city unique in America for its leadership in the fields of art and industry, in financial and intellectual life.

Although individual styles and ideas have changed dramatically over the past hundred years, the rule of law remains a constant. As it has helped us to find our way through the complexities of the 20th century, so it will guide New Yorkers through the future.

Over the last one hundred years, millions of people have seen New York as their first glimpse of America. Here millions of others have come from across the nation to test themselves and their talents, to measure themselves against the city’s standards of excellence. New York has always been different. Everything in America that was new in technology or science, in art and literature, was first new in New York. Today, 7 million people live in the city; another million commute here to work every day.