New York’s complex court bureaucracy shields judges from accountability

Document Type

Opinion

Publication Title

City & State

Publication Date

5-3-2024

Abstract

(Excerpt)

Earlier this week, advocates unveiled a new effort around judicial selection in New York, calling for an end to automatic reappointments for New York judges. Noting that New York’s state court judges are given terms of fixed length, the advocates are calling for judges to be evaluated and scrutinized before being reappointed or reelected to new terms. This demand is correct, and this effort is valuable, but it undersells the interrelated problems around judicial selection, judicial transparency and judicial accountability.

My scholarship focuses on an under-examined part of the court system: court administration. My research reveals that the court administrative bureaucracy, which includes a complex hierarchy of judges, has enormous power to shape how laws are interpreted in courtrooms. Court administrators, who wield power to control where judges are assigned, have both directly advised judges in New York on how to interpret the law and have created administrative work-arounds around certain laws – such as with the recent bail reform – which have tacitly communicated to judges their view of how such laws should be interpreted.

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