| "The Foundations
of the New York State Supreme Court" | |
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The Foundations of the New York State Supreme Court (1691-1991): A Study in Sources
ALBERT M. ROSENBLATT[1] One of the most intriguing things about seemingly portentous events is that we can almost never be sure whether the day will be celebrated again. Is it worthy of an anniversary? A jubilee? A centennial? A tricentennial, perhaps? Some momentous events seem to have simply happened: Newton experiments with gravitation in 1665 and is struck by an apple, and an idea. Others are shaped by political and military circumstances: Normandy, June 6, 1944. Sometimes the participants themselves seem to have known that a great day was upon them, of the kind that would echo through the corridors of history: July 4, 1776. In 1691, the General Assembly of the Colony of New York established a "Courts of Judicature for the Ease of Benefit of Each Respective City, Town and County." It appears to have been the fourth item of business enacted on May 6th; its modest place and tenor give little clue that it was destined for tricentennial celebration. To put the matter in chronological perspective, J.S. Bach, George Frederick Handel and Domenico Scarlatti were all six years old; Carolina was soon to be divided between North and South, and in 15 years Benjamin Franklin would be born. The creation of the 1691 judiciary was extraordinary in a number of ways. That it was put into place at all, and ready to function, seems miraculous, considering the character of the colony at that time. New York was founded not as a like-minded, theologically ordered community, but as a commercial enterprise. New Yorkers of the day were a heterogeneous lot. In 1686 Governor Thomas Dongan could report that the City of New York contained not only major groupings of Dutch Calvinists, French Calvinists and Anglicans, but also Lutherans, Quakers, Jews, Sabbatarians, Antisabbatarians, Anabaptists and Independents. Judicial Mosaic Reflecting such wide political, social and ethnic diversity, the years preceding 1691 reveal more of a judicial mosaic than anything resembling a |
 coherent court plan. Although our present system has been called a patchwork of courts, the same may be said of it 300 years earlier, with one or two added impediments. Unlike our colonial courts, today s tribunals function in the same language, more or less, and have resort to a common jurisprudence. In 1691, however, all the courts did not, in a manner of speaking, read from the same advance sheets. There were the Dutch, the Bible Code practitioners and the English. The Dutch settled the colony in 1623, and had developed their jurisprudence directly from Holland. For official business and judicial affairs, they converted a tavern into the Stadt Huys on Pearl Street in Manhattan in 1642,[2] and in 1646 authorized villagers of "Breuckelen," and later, Manhattan, to elect their own judicial officials,[3] helping (however unsubstantially) to satisfy a thirst for popular rule. Schout, Schepens and Burgomasters was not the name of a law firm. It was the name of the Colonial Dutch court corresponding roughly to sheriff, prosecutor and mayor. The records of these courts from 1653 to 1674 are felicitously intact in several bound volumes.[4] The earliest conveyance on record of the Colonial Dutch involves the sale of a lot for 24 guilders (figured to be $9.60, or less than half the cost of Manhattan Island, which, seven years earlier, Peter Minuit, the third governor, bought from the Indians for 60 guilders). In 1665, our first English Governor, Richard Nicolls, revoked the Dutch rule by appointment of the "Mayor, Alderman and Sheriffe," according to the "Custome of England...," but the Dutch courts and their influence did not dissolve overnight. The names of their officials are, of course, still with us, in such place names as Van Cortlandt, Kip and Beekman. Their tribunals evolved into the "Mayor s Courts," specifically authorized under the 1691 Act as Courts of Common Pleas.[5] In addition to the Dutch, a second source of jurisprudence flowed from the Bible Codes practiced by New England Puritan migrants to Long Island and Westchester towns. Their courts looked more to biblical scripture than the commercial orientation of Dutch law. |
 The Historical Society of the Courts of the State of New York | |
