Special Commission on the Future of the New York State Courts

Our Eleven Trial Courts
New York State has eleven different trial courts. They
are: the Supreme Court, which sits in all sixty-two counties
statewide; the Court of Claims, which likewise sits statewide;
Surrogate’s Courts in each county; County Courts in each county
outside New York City; Family Courts in New York City and in
each of the fifty-seven counties outside the City; a New York City
Civil Court; a New York City Criminal Court; District Courts for
parts of Long Island; a separate City Court for each of the sixtyone
cities outside New York City; and Town and Village Justice
Courts in most towns and villages statewide.
“[M]ultiplicity of courts is
characteristic of archaic law.”
– Roscoe Pound, 1906
The current structure has its roots in 1846, when Article
VI of the New York State Constitution was adopted. Prior to that
time, the New York State judiciary was comprised of a loose
confederation of small courts and judges who traveled around
the state, sitting in individual locales for given periods of time
during the year. Article VI consolidated the disparate circuit
court system and other sundry courts into a Supreme Court and
organized the state into eight Judicial Districts. Article VI also
established the Court of Appeals, created the Surrogate’s Court
and converted various other courts into a County Court system.
Even with these changes, the New York State court
system remained a hodgepodge. Many of the vestigial courts
that dated back to colonial times were still in operation in various
parts of the state. Prior to the constitutional convention of 1894,
New York State still had Courts of Oyer and Terminer
(established in 1691 to hear criminal matters) in operation around
the state and other, more parochial courts operating at the local
level, including the Court of Common Pleas of New York City,
the City Court of Brooklyn and the Superior Court of Buffalo.
While the constitutional convention of 1894 eliminated a number
of these courts, other such courts were preserved. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, New York State still had a
multiplicity of different courts handling cases throughout the
state, including Children’s Courts, Domestic Relations Courts,
District Courts, Courts of <strong>Special</strong> Sessions and many other
judicial bodies. Over the ensuing fifty years, few changes were
proposed, while the responsibilities and caseload of the court
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A Court System for the Future, February 2007