| "Appellate
Division, Second Department, 100th Anniversary " | |
THE HISTORY OF THE COURT |
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 Courtesy Brooklyn Historical Society
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To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the court, we
have collected photos of the old county courthouses in the
ten counties of the Second Department.
This is a photo of the Kings County Courthouse, which was constructed in 1861. The photo dates from 1923. |
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Origins The Supreme Court of the State of New York may be traced to 1691, with the creation of its colonial antecedent. After the Revolutionary War, the fledgling state, in 1777, enacted its first Constitution, under which final appellate review was conducted in the "Court for the Trial of Impeachments and the Correction of Errors." In 1846 that court was replaced by the Court of Appeals, with intermediate appellate jurisdiction lodged in eight coordinate appellate tribunals. By the late nineteenth century, the intermediate system of appellate review had taken the form of nine General Terms, five in the Supreme Court and four in the Superior City Courts. The Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court is the outgrowth of the General Term of the Supreme Court, which lasted from 1870 until the 1894 Constitution. At the Constitutional Convention of 1894, the General Term was abolished and replaced by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court began with the same four departments that exist today, but with the aim that the Departments were to be of more or less equal population — a condition that has since | |
 The Historical Society of the Courts of the State of New York | |
