Special Commission on the Future of the New York State Courts

process for the Appellate Division will be more competitive and
there will be greater assurance that only the most qualified judges
will be selected to serve in the appellate courts.
Concerns About the Impact on the Electoral
Process
Time and again, the issue of court restructuring has been
conflated with the issue of judicial selection. Many have opposed
court restructuring in the past because they have feared, rationally
or not, that a restructured court system would be the first step
toward changes to the way judges attain their positions.
Relatedly, a concern has been raised to the effect that
restructuring would “undermine the democratic principles of ‘one
person, one vote’ and the Voting Rights Act.” 167 Both of these
concerns are without merit.
As explained in great detail in Section Six above, our plan
calls for no changes at all to the method through which judges
reach office. There should be no confusion on this point: our
merger-in-place proposal makes not a single change to the system
of judicial selection that currently prevails in this state. 168
Court restructuring and judicial selection are distinct
issues and the former is not dependent upon any changes to the
latter. The message we repeat throughout this Report is that we
can realize vast efficiencies through a restructuring while leaving
intact the present system of judicial selection. On the other hand,
if the concern has to do with the ability of OCA to move, in
theory, a duly elected JSC out of his or her district, and/or to sit
in a different Division, we note that (as discussed above) OCA
already has (and has not abused) that power.
“This year, nearly four million
cases were filed in the State
trial courts. Only by simplifying
and restructuring the system
will we be able to make
maximum use of our judicial
resources to efficiently handle
such enormous caseloads.”
– Chief Judge Judith
Kaye, October 1997
For these reasons, we see no impact whatsoever on the
principle of “one person, one vote” and certainly none under the
Voting Rights Act. Under our proposal, the system of judicial
selection would remain exactly the same as it was before and
there would be no impact on the rights of voters.
167
JSC REPORT, supra note 40, at 5.
168
The one exception is for the Housing Court, which presents a unique
issue requiring different treatment. See Section Six, above.
A Court System for the Future, February 2007 93