Special Commission on the Future of the New York State Courts

Town and Village Justice Courts
There has recently been much public discussion
concerning New York State’s sprawling system of 1,277 Town
and Village Justice Courts (the “Justice Courts”). These courts,
located in over 925 towns and 325 villages across New York
State, preside over a wide variety of matters, including
arraignment of all criminal matters, and the adjudication of
misdemeanors, traffic infractions and other violations. The
Justice Courts also have jurisdiction over civil matters where the
amount at issue does not exceed $3,000. There are nearly 2,000
locally selected town and village justices servicing the Justice
Courts. Many of these justices are non-lawyers, as is permitted
by law, and have little or no legal training other than a weeklong
course that is administered at the beginning of their terms and an
annual two-day mandatory training session. At the same time,
the Justice Courts perform a critical function by offering ready
access to the court system to hundreds of thousands of New
Yorkers, particularly upstate, for whom the nearest City or
County Court may be dozens of miles away or farther.
In recent months, much criticism has been levied at the
Justice Courts. The <strong>Commission</strong> on the Future of Indigent
Defense Services, a panel assembled by Chief Judge Kaye to
examine the provision of legal services to indigent defendants in
New York State, recently studied the Justice Courts in this context
and issued troubling conclusions. The panel observed that there
is a “widespread abrogation of the right to counsel” in the Justice
Courts, and referred to the situation as a “crisis.” 155 Additional
concerns were raised in a three-part series in the New York Times
in September 2006 focusing on problematic cases in the Justice
Courts, and describing several of its judges as unfamiliar with
basic principles of criminal law and civil rights. 156 More recently,
the State Legislature convened a series of hearings to examine
the Justice Courts, and to hear testimony from judges, litigants
and organizations that monitor the court system and its judges.
“An unfamiliarity with basic
legal principles is remarkably
common in what are known as
the justice courts, legacies of
the Colonial era that survive in
more than 1,000 New York
towns and villages.”
– Delivering Small Town
Justice with a Mix of
Trial and Error, William
Glaberson, New York
Times, September 26,
2006
155
See COMM’N ON THE FUTURE OF INDIGENT DEFENSE SERVS., FINAL RE-
PORT TO THE CHIEF JUDGE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 21 (2006).
156
See William Glaberson, Broken Bench: In Tiny Courts of N.Y.,
Abuses of Law and Power, N.Y. TIMES, September 25, 2006; see also id., September
26, 2006 and September 27, 2006.
A Court System for the Future, February 2007 81