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A Short History of
the New York State Court System By Marc Bloustein Deputy Counsel New York State Office of Court Administration Albany, New York Since 1962, section 1 of Article VI of the New York State Constitution has proclaimed to all that "[t]here shall be a [U}nified [C]ourt System for the [S]tate." In spite of this confident and unequivocal command, legislators, lawyers, judges and others involved in the administration of justice are still wrestling with one another in an effort to give it meaning. The court merger debate, the pros and cons of which you will hear later this morning, is but the latest round in this wrestling match. Rather than attempt to give you my own personal concept of a Unified Court System, I think it might be instructive were I to chronicle for you significant historical events that have combined to produce our court system -- whether it be unified or otherwise. This historical odyssey should begin in 1846 -- with the Constitutional Convention held in that year. It was then that the antecedents of today's court system began to take form. A primary item on the agenda of that convention was the restructuring of the courts. For the first 70 years of its life, from the time of the State's first Constitution in 1777, the New York Judiciary was a comparatively primitive institution, little changed —- in form and operation —- from the colonial court system erected in the 17th Century. Judges were few in number. All were appointed by a central authority and, because they rode circuit, sometimes sitting in individual locales only once every few months, they had no real constituency and only limited geographical identification, The Chancellor and justices of the Supreme Court served for no fixed term of office, arid were subject only to mandatory retirement at age 60. In effect, each judge was himself an institution with substantial, if not really unlimited, authority to determine the rules of legal practice before his court. Also, each judge generally had the final word in controversies before him as there was little in the way of an appellate court structure. |
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