Special Commission on the Future of the New York State Courts

The diagram below outlines the structure we have
proposed for a new Supreme Court, District Court and Fifth
Department of the Appellate Division.
PROPOSED STRUCTURE
Court of Appeals
Appellate Divisions
of of the
Supreme Court
(Five Departments)
civil
criminal
Appellate Terms of
of
the Supreme Court
(First and Second
Departments)
Supreme Court
District Court
Note: Town and Village Courts and direct appeals excluded.
The Concept of “Merger in Place”
Perhaps no issue has proven more divisive in our state
than the method by which judges are selected. The debate
between whether judges should be popularly elected or whether
they should be appointed (often referred to as “merit selection”
by supporters) has raged for many decades and has operated in
the background, and sometimes the foreground, of many of the
prior proposals to restructure our courts.
This issue has attracted particular attention in recent years
in the wake of recommendations issued by a commission chaired
by John Feerick, former Dean of Fordham University School of
Law, and the affirmance by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Second Circuit of Judge John Gleeson’s January 2006 decision
holding unconstitutional the current system of judicial elections,
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A Court System for the Future, February 2007