New York Supreme Court
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The Supreme Court of the State of New York is the basic New York State trial court of general jurisidiction. There is a supreme court in each of New York State's 62 counties, although some of the smaller counties share judges with neighboring counties. All but the most populous counties are grouped into judicial districts from which the justices are elected, with unwritten agreements allotting the justice seats among the counties of the district.
It is important to note that in most states, "Supreme Court" indicates the highest court in the state. In New York, "Supreme Court" means what other states call "Superior Court" or "State Circuit Court." The highest court in New York State is called "Court of Appeals." Likewise, the highest courts in Maryland and the District of Columbia are also called "Court of Appeal," but their basic trial courts are called "Superior Court," not "Supreme."
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The Supreme Court Today
The supreme court in New York County is located in several buildings in Manhattan. The civil branch is in several buildings near Foley Square: the main New York County Courthouse building at 60 Centre Street (see photo), and three others at 80 Centre Street (across Worth Street), 111 Centre Street, and 71 Thomas Street. The criminal branch is at 100 Centre Street, shared with the Manhattan Criminal Court, the Office of the District Attorney and other agencies, and at 111 Centre Street, shared with the New York County Civil Court. This is also true of the Supreme Court in Kings County and in Richmond County. In Richmond County several "Parts" of the Supreme Court are located in the former U.S. Navy Home Port (each Part is usually where one Supreme Court judge sits).
The State Supreme Court handles large civil cases, and also handles felony criminal cases within the five counties that make up New York City. Outside New York City, the County Courts handle felony criminal cases. Smaller civil cases and less serious criminal cases are handled in other courts: the Civil Court and Criminal Court in New York City; County and District Courts in Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island; and County, City, Town and Village Courts in the rest of the state. Certain specialized matters are handled by other courts; for example, probate matters are heard in Surrogate's Court, juvenile delinquency and child custody matters in Family Court, and tort and contract claims against the state for monetary damages in the Court of Claims. Although the New York Supreme Court in theory has unlimited general original jurisdiction over civil litigation, in practice it does not normally hear cases with lower monetary claims that are within the powers of a New York state trial court of limited jurisdiction such as County Court or N.Y.C. Civil Court. By statute, the Supreme Court has exclusive jurisdiction over three areas: matrimonial actions (such as for divorce or annulment), declaratory judgments, and so-called Article 78 actions, but effectively has exclusive jurisdication over other areas sounding in equity such as specific performance and rescission of contract, which have been defined by applicable caselaw as unsuitable for adjudication by the lower courts.
Appeals from Supreme Court decisions go to the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, which is New York's intermediate appellate court divided into four appellate departments. Notwithstanding the departments, the Appellate Division is one court, and its decisions are binding on all lower courts unless there is a conflict among the appellate departments. New York's highest appellate court is the Court of Appeals; appeals are taken from the four departments to the Court of Appeals; decisions from the Court of Appeals are binding throughout the state.
New York Supreme Court justices are elected to 14-year terms. In practice, most of the power of selecting judges belongs to local political party organizations. Regardless of the term for which they are elected, justices retire at the end of the year in which they reach the age of seventy years, a replacement being chosen to a fresh 14-year term that November with effect from the start of the following year. Recently, a federal district court in Brooklyn declared the method of electing Supreme Court justices to be unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court postponed implementation of a remdy for this constitutional violation for one election cycle.
History and Evolution of the Court
The New York State Supreme Court was established in 1691, making it the oldest continuing court of general jurisdiction in the United States. Pursuant to legislation adopted by the New York Assembly, the court, then known as the Supreme Court of Judicature, was given jurisdiction over criminal and civil pleas. The court was also empowered to hear appeals from local courts. The bench consisted of a Chief Justice and two, later three, Associate Justices. Appeals were taken to the royal governor and his council and from there to the Privy Council in London. During the remainder of the colonial period, the New York Assembly and the royal governors were in conflict over the authority to regulate the jurisdiction and procedure of the court, with many New Yorkers claiming that the acts of the Assembly and English common law defined that jurisdiction and procedure. In fact, basic notions of English common law were transplanted to the State and the country generally through the workings of the Supreme Court.
The population of New York City was small at the time of the creation of the court and the number of attorneys tiny (perhaps no more than 20). The City did not reach a population of 25,000 until 1774. The Court was not much changed by the first state constitution of 1777, although a local appeals system was, of course, established.
Although the English common law assisted New Yorkers in struggles with the royal governors and provided a basis for the assertion of important rights, that body of law had the disadvantage of being complicated, using complex terminology, ancient categories of lawsuit and legal fictions. Prominent New York attorney Henry G. Sedgwick wrote in 1821 of the persistence of pointless technicalities: "The life has departed, and the soul has gone; but the body is embalmed, and kept to future ages in a useless state, between preservation and decay." This remark illustrated a developing spirit of reform in the country in which New York again led the way. Between 1827 and 1829, the Legislature issued the first systematic codification of statute law in the United States.
By the time New York approached the mid-point of the 19th century, the State and City had changed greatly from the tiny, largely agrarian society in which the court had originally been born. The country was experiencing dramatic economic and social changes as the population grew and the industrial revolution spread its effects across the land. New York City and State were, then as now, capitals of commerce, industry, finance and the professions. To accommodate the new realities, the people of the State determined that a revised and modernized court system was required and, thus, the Constitution of 1846 was approved. The Constitution substantially enlarged the Supreme Court and provided that its Justices would be drawn from and sit in districts linked to county lines. This contrasted with the original practice, common in the early days of the Republic, of Judges traveling throughout the State ("riding circuit"). The new Supreme Court was the state's highest court of original, unlimited jurisdiction. In order to simplify proceedings, a new code of procedure, called the Field Code after a leading advocate for reform, David Dudley Field, was introduced in 1848. This code became widely imitated across the country as the United States developed a body of law founded on fundamental English concepts and rights but using methods of pleading and other procedures that were much more simple.
The Supreme Court was the first in the country to record its opinions officially. The caseload and the production of opinions have changed radically from the early days. In 1999, the court issued over 37,000 decisions on motions, not counting dispositions at trial.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the law in New York continued to develop and to increase in sophistication, in part through the work of our court. Industrialization and the rise of corporations transformed the economic foundations of the nation. The law contributed to these changes by providing a reasoned and efficient system for the resolution of all manner of commercial disputes.
New York continued to play an important role in the growth of the law in the twentieth century. New York lawyers were leading figures in the law’s continued development, in the movement for greater uniformity and comprehensibility in commercial law, in great debates over legal philosophy, and the like.
At least since the New Deal era, there has been a significant trend toward the use of legislation to address legal questions and a decreased reliance on the growth of the common law through innovative judicial decision-making. Law continues to be made by Judges through decisions, of course, but more often than in previous times, decisions today concern the interpretation of statutes. At the same time, the nature of the dockets in our court has changed greatly from those of earlier times. For some decades, and continuing to the present, the bulk of the work has consisted of lawsuits over physical injuries.
In 1986, the court and the rest of the State court system underwent a dramatic change with the introduction of the Individual Assignment System ("IAS"). Prior to that time, the Justices and their colleagues throughout the State did not concern themselves with the pace at which lawsuits moved and did not supervise cases until the eve of trial. Different Justices, sometimes many, handled pretrial applications or motions in each case. The IAS system changed this. In most instances, a case is assigned to a single Justice for its life. That Justice is now charged with the task of assuring that the case comes to a resolution quickly and with as little expense as possible. This places a huge burden on the Justices of thecourt, one that was unknown to their predecessors of even two decades ago, let alone Cardozo or the Justices of the Supreme Court of Judicature.
Image:60CenterStreet 1927.jpg Notwithstanding the change in the character of the caseload, the court remains a leading center for the resolution of commercial law disputes. In 1995, a Commercial Division of the Supreme Court was created in this court and in Monroe County to concentrate on the resolution of commercial lawsuits. The aim is to ensure that New York’s system for addressing these complicated cases is efficient, sophisticated and sound, in keeping with New York’s role as not merely the national but the world capital of commerce, finance, media and other great businesses.
The court has been housed over the centuries in various facilities, starting with the Old City Hall. At the time of the US Declaration of Independence, Foley Square, where our court is now located, was a deep pond on which residents skated in the winter. The court sat in City Hall after its completion in 1811. The main courthouse at 60 Centre Street was designed by a distinguished architect, Guy Lowell of Boston, and opened in 1927.
The Bar of the Court
Image:AlexanderHamilton.gif Many lawyers important to the history of the country and our legal system have been members of the Bar of this court and active practitioners here. Alexander Hamilton, a graduate of King's College (as Columbia University was then known), was a prominent attorney in the City, with successive offices on Wall Street, Pine Street and Broadway, and practiced frequently in this court. He wrote a manual on practice in the court. Hamilton, whose term as Secretary of the Treasury, established the economic foundations of the Republic, was a distinguished advocate in commercial law. A recent poll of legal scholars named him the second most significant figure in the history of law in the United States (first was James Madison), in good part for his work on The Federalist Papers. His co-author, along with Madison, was John Jay, former Chief Justice of our Supreme Court of Judicature and later first Chief Justice of the United States.
Other prominent attorneys practiced in this court: for example, Aaron Burr, whose name of course is forever linked to Hamilton’s, Martin Van Buren, later President of the United States, William H. Seward, DeWitt Clinton, Samuel Tilden, William Evarts, Elihu Root, Charles Evans Hughes, Joseph Choate, Joseph Proskauer, John W. Davis.
The Judiciary
Image:BenjaminNCardozo.gif James Kent was a Chief Justice of this court. He gave New York the country’s first codification of laws and wrote an influential text on American law based upon lectures he gave at the Columbia Law School. Other great Judges presided here, names perhaps not well known to the general public but revered by the legal community for their scholarship, judgment and dedication to the public interest: for example, Lewis Morris, Samuel Seabury, Irving Lehman, Bernard Botein, Charles D. Breitel, to name a few.
Benjamin N. Cardozo, a graduate of Columbia Law School, was elected a Justice of our court in 1913. His outstanding ability was such that he was promptly made a Judge of the Court of Appeals, the State’s highest court, by designation until his election to that court shortly thereafter. He went on to become Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals and to grace the Supreme Court of the United States. Cardozo is generally recognized as among the handful of the greatest Judges in the history of this country.
Important Cases
In 1735, the court heard one of the great cases in the history of American law and freedom, the seditious libel case brought against the publisher John Peter Zenger because of inconvenient opinions expressed in Zenger's newspaper about the colonial government. The jury acquitted Zenger, though not until after two of his attorneys had been disbarred for giving voice to unorthodox views. This case provided important and enduring lessons for the legal system and the country as a whole about freedom and the power of government, lessons of particular importance during years when the temptation to codify restrictions on speech and debate about politics and matters of broad public interest was formidable.
Alexander Hamilton by no means confined his practice to commercial law. In 1804, in People v. Croswell, he appeared for the defendant, an editor who had been indicted for seditious libel based upon information he had printed about President Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton also represented the defendant in People v. Frear, in which another editor was indicted for criminal contempt based on statements he printed about the proceedings in Croswell. Hamilton lost these cases, but his arguments ultimately prevailed, contributing to the evolving national understanding of freedom of speech.
Although the many great cases in the history of the court are well worth noting, of great significance too has been the court's role as dispenser of justice in hundreds of thousands of "routine" cases, those that had no particular interest to the general public of the day but that often were of vital concern to the litigants. The experience of other countries in recent decades should remind us of the centrality of a free, impartial, responsible and effective judicial system to the proper administration of government and the protection of public rights.
Trivia
- The inscription on the front of the courthouse taken from a letter of George Washington to the Attorney General in 1789: "The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government."