Special Commission on the Future of the New York State Courts

domestic violence, there are many other families whose cases do
not involve a criminal aspect but who nevertheless must appear
in multiple courts to resolve interrelated divorce, custody and
visitation issues.
Third, while OCA has managed to develop a number of
new and innovative ways to serve the needs of our citizens
notwithstanding the current court structure, these “work-arounds”
have come at significant cost. It takes enormous effort to
administer the IDV Courts, largely because they must be
administered within the confines of the current system. There
are no cases originally filed in the IDV part of Supreme Court;
rather, eligible cases must be transferred from local criminal
courts, County Court, or Family Court or reassigned from the
matrimonial part of Supreme Court. 170 Court personnel must
cross check against separate case management computer systems
and contend with separate numbering systems and separate
clerk’s offices for each of these trial courts in order to identify
eligible cases. 171 Once a set of cases has been identified for
transfer, the IDV judge must review each file and approve its
transfer, and the transfer itself requires notices to be sent out to
all of the parties and often physically moving case files from one
building to another. 172 While those who administer the IDV
Courts work extremely hard, eligible cases still fall through the
cracks and even families whose cases are eventually transferred
to IDV Courts may experience delay and additional appearances
in the courts where their cases were originally filed before the
transfer is finalized. Simply put, the administration of IDV
Courts is complicated and labor intensive and would be far
simpler and less arbitrary under a consolidated system.
“[T]here are a great number of
basic and major defects which
are not susceptible of change
or improvement within the
framework of our present
courts. These basic difficulties
can be dealt with only by the
institution of a system which,
of itself, will eliminate or mitigate
them.”
– Tweed <strong>Commission</strong>,
Subcommittee on
Modernization and
Simplification of the
Court Structure (1955)
Fourth, constitutional change will legitimize courts that
suffer from a lack of resources and a lack of respect on account
of their current positions within the judicial hierarchy. As
discussed earlier in this Report, Family Court judges adjudicate
more than two-and-a-half times the number of cases that
170
Information provided by OCA.
171
Id.
172
Id.
A Court System for the Future, February 2007 95