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"A New Judicial Article for New York" |
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While the delegates to the constitutional convention will be faced with many other important problems such as reapportionment, unicameralism v. bicameralism, executive reorganization, and state-local relations,[122] the drafting of a new judicial article is challenging enough to call for the highest talents that can be mustered, for the job bristles with difficulties. The principal (but not the only) issues in this connection have been discussed above, and may be summarized as follows: (1) How long should the article be? How much should be included? (2) Should the Family Court, the Court of Claims, and the Surrogate's Court be merged into the Supreme Court? (3) Should the office of Justice of the Peace be abolished? (4) Should the New York City Civil and Criminal Courts be merged into a single city-wide court? (5) Should New York switch from an elective to an appointive system of selecting judges, with or without nominating commissions? (6) Should all New York judges be given uniform tenure? What should it be? (7) Is the present system of removal of judges adequate, or should it be replaced by a California-type removal commission? (8) Should some administrative power be transferred from the presiding justices of the Appellate Division and the Judicial Conference to the Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals? (9) Should the court system have centralized financing and budgeting? (10) Should the rule-making power be vested in the legislature, the courts, or in some other body? In the hope that a rough draft of a new judicial Article may serve as a catalyst for the thinking of the delegates to the constitutional convention, there follows a proposal recently prepared in a seminar on judicial administration. The seminar was held at the New York University Law School in the fall of 1966, with a membership of graduate and undergraduate law students[123] and some of the staff of the Institute of Judicial Administration.[124] Each student studied one specific aspect of the general subject and prepared a draft of provisions embodying his own ideas. He presented it to the group and it was criticized and discussed not only by the regular members of the seminar, but also by an outside expert having special knowledge and experience in the area under discussion.[125] Finally a consensus was reached among the members of the seminar, not precisely reflecting the views of the authors of this article or those of any other individuals who participated, but reflecting the composite judgment of the group as to what New York's judicial article should contain. Here is the proposed article: |
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 The Historical Society of the Courts of the State of New York |