Special Commission on the Future of the New York State Courts

The Supposed Ease of an Administrative “Fix”
Some have questioned the need for a constitutional
amendment to overhaul the state’s court system in light of the
various administrative “fixes” implemented by OCA in recent
years. For example, given the success of the IDV courts, which
have been widely praised and enabled families to bring related
claims before a single judge, some may question the need for
full-scale reform when administrative improvements such as this
are possible. For the following reasons, these temporary
solutions are no panacea and offer only a foretaste of the
improvements that would occur through a comprehensive
restructuring of the courts.
“[T]he shortcomings of the
present system are so pervasive
that placing additional patches
on an already ‘crazy quilt’ is
not a satisfactory answer.”
– Action Unit No. 4 of the
State Bar Association
(1979)
First, making these type of changes administratively is a
backward and scattershot way to address the wholesale problems
facing our courts. As described throughout this Report, these
issues have languished for more than a century and today affect
nearly every courthouse in the state. Making a change to this or
that piece of the system simply cannot effect the kinds of systemwide
changes that we have proposed in our plan. Furthermore,
most of the administrative fixes currently in place seek to address
the inefficiencies created by overlapping cases, yet as discussed
above in Section Three, the inefficiencies created by unnecessary
appearances in multiple courts account for only one-quarter of
the total savings to be realized by individuals through court
restructuring. 169
Second, it is naïve to think that administrative fixes can
be uniformly implemented throughout the state. With no
overarching legal authority providing for consolidated courts, the
benefits of these improvements will not reach the vast majority
of those in need. The IDV Courts, for example, do not address
– and cannot address – all varieties of family-related matters. As
the name suggests, IDV Courts have authority to take cases only
if they involve a pending criminal case or, at the very least,
allegations of domestic violence. While we believe that it is
extremely valuable to have a dedicated legal forum for victims of
169
See Appendix ii.
94
A Court System for the Future, February 2007