September 2008
A special commission appointed by Hon. Judith S. Kaye, Chief Judge of the Courts in the State of New York, has issued a Report: Justice Most Local, The Future of Town and Village Courts in New York State, which recommends a significant consolidation of the “centuries-old” local court system.
Am excerpt from the Overview of Findings section of the Executive Summary”
The ABA Commission on the American Jury Project is pleased to announce Judge Judith S. Kaye, the Chief Judge of the State of New York, and G. Thomas Munsterman, Director Emeritus of the National Center for State Courts Center for Jury Studies, as the recipients of the 2008 Jury System Impact Award. The award honors those that have made tremendous efforts toward the improvement and strengthening of the American jury system.
Both awards were presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting in New York, NY during the Judicial Division Welcome Breakfast on Friday, August 8 from 7:30 – 9:00am at the Marriott Marquis in New York City.
.:: During the 2008 ABA Annual Meeting, the Judicial Division will be hosting several interesting educational programs for the judges, lawyers, and law students, including the following:
: ** National Conference of State Trial Judges 50th Anniversary Program
** A Swift Round-trip on Erie Railroad: State Law in Federal Courts; Federal Law in State Courts
The following are links to State of New York Annual Reports of the Chief Administrator of the Courts, beginning with the Report for 2004. The most recent report available at this initial posting is for 2006. It is our intention to post subsequent reports as they become available.
The annual reports of the Chief Administrator of the New York Unified Court System, which are submitted to the Governor and the Legislature in accordance with Section 212 of the Judiciary Law, reflect the activities of the Unified Court System (UCS) of the State of New York for the year reported.
Included in these reports are significant statistical data, an outline of court structure, highlights of the court system’s initiatives–borth administrative and programmatic–and a summary of the legislative agenda of UCS for the year reported.
From: Associated Press:
Judges Raise Ordered
June 11, 2008 at 2:17 pm by Rick Karlin
[From an article in the March 17, 2008 The National Law Journal by Tony Mauro of the Legal Times]
There’s a video out there you may want to see – a web site called “LawProse Inc” on which 8 of the 9 U.S. Supreme Court justices speak about answering questions, writing briefs, arguing before the Court, and their own relationships with written words. For instance, Chief Justice Roberts thinks “lengthy citations to Web sites that are now common in briefs are an ‘obscene’ distraction ‘with all those letters strung together.’ ” Also he doesn’t like overly-long briefs, “I have yet to put down a brief and say ‘I wish that had been longer.'” Justice Breyer is bothered by the same thing, “If I see (a brief that is) 50 pages, it can be 50 pages, but I’m already going to groan,” but “If I see 30, I think, well, he thinks he has really got the law on his side because he only took up 30.”
“Justice Kennedy hates it when lawyers turn nouns into verbs by tacking on ‘-ize’ at the end, as in ‘incentivize.’ Such showy, made-up words, he sniffs, are ‘like wearing a very ugly cravat.”
Judith S. Kaye, chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, has been selected as the recipient of the Fifth Annual Dwight D. Opperman Award for Judicial Excellence. Chief Judge Kaye was chosen by a three-member panel: JudgeEllen Rosenblum, Oregon Court of Appeals; Judge Lorenzo Arredondo, Lake Circuit Court for Indiana; and Chief Justice Pascal Calogero, Jr., Louisiana Supreme Court. The Award will be presented later this year.
Press Release: New York Chief Judge Judith Kaye to Receive Fifth Annual Dwight Opperman Award
“Legislation being carried by the chairman of the [New York] state Senate’s Judiciary Committee would set limits on the Office of Court Administration’s now unfettered authority to allow the mechanical recording of proceedings in any state courts in New York….”
To see complete article, New York Senate Bill S7995 and Sponsor’s Memorandum Click here
From: Stashenko, Joel. “Senate Bill Would Limit OCA’s Use of Court Recording Devices,” New York Law Journal. (May 19, 2008). p. 1,8.
The following was first posted on the InChambers weblog compiled by boppanny@aol.com, May 2008.
[From Mark Levin’s book, “Men in Black”]
“Robert C. Grier (U.S. Supreme Court Justice). Appointed by James Polk in 1846, Grier suffered paralysis in 1867 and thereafter began a slow mental decline. Grier’s case is most troubling because he was the swing vote in one of the more important cases of his era, Hepburn v. Griswold, which struck down the law allowing the federal government to print money. “Grier’s demonstration of mental incapacity during the conference discussion was such that every one of his colleagues acknowledged that action had to be taken.”
From: Vesselin, Mitev and Daniel Wise. ” Kaye Writes Governor To Deny Work ‘Slowdown’ “, New York Law Journal, April 30, 2008. p. 1,6.
“Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye wrote Governor David A. Paterson yesterday to assure him that reports of judicial “slowdown” were ‘without basis.’ ”
“In addition, the court system’s Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics issued an opinion Monday determining that Chief Judge Kaye’s recent lawsuit to compel an increase in judicial salaries does not require judges to recuse themselves, but they may do so as a matter of individual conscience….”
Criminal Law Library Blog