NY needs more Supreme Court judges; here's how to get them
A judge sorts through papers at the state Supreme Court in Queens in 2019. The state is woefully short of the number of Supreme Court justices needed to handle the burgeoning caseload that has left litigants waiting sometimes years to resolve cases. Credit: Charles Eckert
This guest essay reflects the views of Frank Caruso, a state Supreme Court Justice from Niagara Falls and president of the Association of Justices of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, and Carmen R. Velasquez, a state Supreme Court Justice from Queens and president of the Supreme Court Justices Association of the City of New York.
There is general agreement within the legal community that New York State is woefully short of the number of Supreme Court justices needed to handle the burgeoning caseload that has left litigants waiting sometimes years to resolve cases involving personal injuries, medical malpractice, matrimonial matters, commercial claims, or myriad other cases.
But that agreement does not extend to how to fix the problem, which is tied to a provision in the New York State Constitution that assigned Supreme Court seats for each 50,000 residents in each of the state’s 13 judicial districts.
There is a proposed constitutional amendment currently before the State Legislature which would simply remove that population requirement. That amendment passed in the last legislative session and, in the wake of the recently adopted state budget, is now under consideration for a second reading and passage after which it could be submitted to the voters for approval.
Those of us who sit on the Supreme Court think there is a better way.
We believe that simply removing a population metric would threaten to unduly politicize the assignment of new judicial seats, subjecting that process to the horse-trading and give-and-take that marks the usual way business is done in the overtly political branches of government.
The Association of Justices for the Supreme Court of the State of New York, the Supreme Court Justices Association of the City of New York, the Latino Judges Association, and the Judicial Friends Association have urged the State Legislature to take a second look at an alternative amendment proposed by Assemb. Jeffrey Dinowitz of the Bronx and State Sen. Leroy Comrie of Queens.
That amendment, instead of removing the population cap entirely from the Constitution, would lower the population requirement to 30,000, which would produce authorization for an additional 266 seats around the state and avoid the politicization of the selection process.
The proposed amendment to simply remove any population metric from the Constitution, proposed by Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Assemb. Alex Bores, both from Manhattan, lacks any objective metric to determine how many judges would be added and where they would be placed.
This is not a partisan issue, but a geographic one. It affects counties all around the state, some predominantly Democratic and some predominantly Republican, but each deserves to have Supreme Court seats assigned where they are needed.
The "easy fix" is not always the best solution if it creates politicization affecting the nonpolitical so-called "third branch" of our government.
Lowering the constitutional mandate to 30,000 would create hundreds of new judicial seats while avoiding the politicization of the selection process. That is the best way to ensure an adequate number of justices, and an assurance that litigants will not be left waiting endlessly to resolve their cases.
This guest essay reflects the views of Frank Caruso, a state Supreme Court Justice from Niagara Falls and president of the Association of Justices of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, and Carmen R. Velasquez, a state Supreme Court Justice from Queens and president of the Supreme Court Justices Association of the City of New York.
