Special Commission on the Future of the New York State Courts

• improved service to the public through reallocation of judicial
and staff resources;
• a reduction in backlog and improved case disposition
time due to improved court calendars and case management
practices;
• judges hearing a wider range of cases than before unification;
and
“The New York Courts, as
presently structured, are inefficient,
outdated, and badly in
need of reform.”
– Association of Judges
of the Family Court of
the State of New York,
January 2007
• standardization of local rules, policies and procedures to
support the countywide structure of court operations. 64
It should be noted that California is twice as populous
as New York and its court system is the largest in the nation.
California’s state courts serve over 36 million people, employ
more than 2,000 judicial officers and 19,000 court employees,
and hear more than eight million cases each year. 65 To state
the obvious, the California model shows that a large and
sprawling state need not have a correspondingly complicated
court structure.
Many Other States
In addition to New Jersey and California, New York lags
far behind many other states which have successfully
consolidated and simplified their court structures over the last
fifty or more years. Several states followed in the footsteps of
New Jersey and California’s courts during the 1950s (e.g.,
Delaware), 1960s (e.g., Colorado) and the 1970s (e.g., Iowa,
Illinois, Connecticut and Washington D.C.). 66 Similarly, many
other states in the nation have structurally unified systems,
including Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, South
Dakota, Wisconsin, Connecticut, and Arkansas.
64
Id.
65
See California Judicial Branch, Fact Sheet, April 2006, available at
http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/reference/documents/factsheets/Calif_Judicial_
Branch.pdf
66
See THE SIGNIFICANCE OF JUDICIAL STRUCTURE, supra note 48, at 4.
32
A Court System for the Future, February 2007