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"A New Judicial Article for New York" |
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A threshold question for the delegates to the constitutional convention to consider is whether New York should have a genuinely unified court system, with a small number of courts and with centralized administration. Such unification is generally considered a condition precedent to more effective judicial administration.[29] Starting with the colonial courts, which were continued in existence by New York's first constitution, the court structure of the state grew in size and complexity until, by the middle of the 20th century, it had become almost unmanageable.[30] There were nine different types of courts in the City of New York and 10 different types outside the city,[31] some of which had been created by constitutional provision and some by legislative enactment. These courts had been created in response to local pressures, without reference to any master plan; and they had rigid, sometimes narrow, and sometimes overlapping jurisdiction.[32] The 1962 amendment to the constitution resulted in a moderate simplification of court structure. It reduced the number of courts of original jurisdiction in New York City from nine to six, created a statewide Family Court to replace the Domestic Relations Court of New York City and the Children's Courts outside the city,[33] and it provided a vehicle by which city. town, or village courts outside of New York City could be consolidated into District Courts.[34] Except for this provision and another that all judges other than justices of the peace were prohibited from practicing law, courts outside New York City remained virtually untouched.[35] Today the constitution still provides for some 17 different courts.[36] The 1962 amendment attempts to provide centralized administrative control, but the language of its first section is more hopeful than descriptive when it says "There shall be a unified court system for the state."[37] Administrative power in New York is dispersed among the Presiding Justices of the four Departments of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. While they, together with the Chief Judge of the state, act as the Administrative Board of the Judicial Conference,[38] each individually possesses vast power. An important issue to consider in the area of court structure is whether justices of the peace should be retained. Antedating even the first state constitution, they served an important function in remote areas for many years.[39] Now, however, conditions have changed radically. A recent nationwide survey demonstrates that they have disappeared ill many states[40] and are on the way out in others. This has come about in two primary ways: states have abolished the office or have so reduced its powers as to make it essentially non-judicial. Most states that have eliminated the justices of the peace have replaced them with a statewide system of full time, professionally trained, salaried judges, functioning in adequate and dignified quarters.[41] The justice of the peace is called upon to perform a variety of judicial functions: he must fix bail, issue arrest and search warrants, hold trials, advise defendants of their rights, and he must decide small, but sometimes complicated, civil cases.[42] It is highly questionable whether one who is untrained in the law can adequately safeguard the rights of criminal defendants in light of such recent United States Supreme Court decisions as Escobedo[43] and Miranda,[44] or adequately protect the rights of civil litigants who are equally deserving of decent, modern justice. In an earlier age, when rural areas were isolated and communication and transportation were slow and difficult, the justice of the peace system made sense. But today, when the state is covered with a system of modern highways, justice can and should be administered even in rural areas by full-time professional judges. New York has tried to improve the justice of the peace system by requiring that new lay justices take a special training course;[45] but the course is of such short duration that, while valuable, it is necessarily somewhat superficial and not adequate to overcome the inherent difficulty of operating with untrained and part-time personnel. Another important problem for the delegates to consider is whether New York should continue to have separate specialized courts — surrogate's courts,[46] family courts,[47] and the court of claims[48] — or whether these courts should be merged into the Supreme Court, as a court of general jurisdiction. The argument for the continued separate existence of these courts is that expertise is needed to deal with probate and family work, and claims against the state. If so, how does one explain the fact that the two candidates for a recent vacancy in the Surrogate's Court in New York City were both justices of the Supreme Court?[49] Or how explain the fact that a single individual may act as Surrogate, Family Court judge and County Court judge in counties outside New York City?[50] Or the fact that Supreme Court judges may be assigned to sit in the Court of Claims?[51] While there may be some substance to the argument for judicial expertise in these courts, particularly in the Family Court, a better solution may be found in the use of specialized judges rather than specialized courts.[52] A judge particularly fitted by training and temperament to do family court work could be assigned to such work as his primary duty, while one better fitted to do estate work could be assigned to it without precluding the possibility of his doing other work as needed. Consolidation of the three courts with the Supreme Court would allow greater flexibility in the assignment of judges, eliminate the problems of subject-matter jurisdiction that now exist, and avoid the shunting of litigants from one court to another, with the miscarriages of justice that occur when jurisdictional lines are excessively rigid.[52a] Another question concerning court structure is whether a single lower court in New York City should be created or whether there should continue to be a separate civil and a separate criminal court for the city. For substantially the same reasons which have just beep discussed in connection with the Supreme Court, the Temporary Commission on the Courts proposed a single, city-wide court with both limited criminal and limited civil jurisdiction,[53] but, along with other Commission proposals, this was not accepted. Since no arguments were advanced at the time against the merits of this proposal, probably the best explanation for its failure is that the civil court judges were elected while the criminal court judges were appointed by the Mayor. The Mayor was unwilling to give up his appointive power, and the other politicians were unwilling to give up their power to control the selection of elective judges. The current judicial article permits the legislature at the request of the Mayor and the City Council to merge the two courts,[54] but this has not been done. If the problem of judicial selection can be solved, there is little or no reason for these two courts to remain separate. Besides determining whether all the courts in the state should be specified ill the constitution, the delegates must also decide whether jurisdiction, both geographical and as to subject-matter, is to he spelled out in detail in the constitution or left to the legislature. In the present judicial article, the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals is given in great detail, while that of the Supreme Court is relatively brief; the jurisdiction of the County Courts is stated in extremely detailed terms, while the provisions on the Court of Claims is but one sentence in length; the jurisdictional provision for the Surrogate's Court is relatively brief, while that for the Family Court is lengthy, and those for the New York City courts are only a little less so; and the jurisdiction of the local courts outside New York City is left to the legislature.[55] A constitutional grant of jurisdiction need not be wordy. The American Bar Association's Model Judicial Article gives the supreme court of a state broad power to fix its own jurisdiction and that of the other courts.[56] Hawaii's article says simply, "The several courts shall have original and appellate jurisdiction as provided by law,"[57] thus delegating to the legislature the power to define jurisdiction and to divide courts into geographical districts and departments. The same approach is followed in the federal constitution.[58] |
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 The Historical Society of the Courts of the State of New York |