After reading “THE STATE OF THE JUDICIARY”, the 2007 status and accomplishment report of the New York Unified Court System, under the leadership of Hon. JUDITH S. KAYE, Chief Judge of the State of New York, I thought it wise to share the salient points thereof, with the hope that Philippine policymakers would consider the helpful and applicable concepts contained in the Report to improve the Philippine Justice System, to wit:
- Salaries. - The New York State courts are among the busiest and most productive in the USA. Yet judicial salaries remain frozen in 1999, when 1,300 NY judges achieved parity with their federal colleagues. But the salaries of federal judges are now twenty three percent ahead of NY state judges, whose salaries have sunk compared to other large states and associate salaries in New York City law firms.
Kaye said that NY judges knew that public service was a privilege that demanded sacrifices. Lawyers at the pinnacle of their careers did not become judges to get rich. “But by any fair measure, we long ago passed the point at which this sacrifice became unreasonable, threatening the excellence of the state bench. New Yorkers want, and deserve, a judiciary that continues to attract and keep the very best lawyers, in turn assuring the quality of justice that they receive in our courts”, Kaye lamented.
She added: “We need the raises, but plainly we also need a better method—a commission system for determining pay increases. It is simply inappropriate to require our judges to campaign and to litigate for equitable compensation. It is the ultimate assault on judicial independence”.
- Structural reform. - In 2006 Kaye announced a Special Commission on the Future of the New York State Courts “to study our court structure and devise a blueprint for reform that would better ensure accountability, better protect crime victims, reduce recidivism, reduce costs and make our courts more efficient, accessible and understandable”. See www.nycourts.gov/reports/courtsys-4future_2007.pdf.
According to the report, “New York’s current court structure is the most archaic and bizarrely convoluted court structure in the nation”. The report recounted the frustration litigants encounter by reason of “our splintered court structure” and that “too many litigants and witnesses waste countless hours making redundant appearances, filing unnecessary papers and suffering unnecessary delays”. The bottom line was lost wages and lost productivity, Kaye said.
The Commission worked with economists and the nonpartisan National Center for State Courts to ascertain that merging the trial courts would save New York and its economy hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The Commission has prepared a constitutional amendment, which Kaye had submitted to the Legislature and to the Governor, calling for the “consolidation of the State’s major trial courts into a simple two-tier structure: a Supreme Court and a District Court”. Kaye said “the current Supreme Court, Court of Claims, County Courts, Family Courts and Surrogate’s Courts would become one Supreme Court, with six Divisions: Family, Commercial, Public Claims, Criminal, Probate and General”.
She added tha “the new District Court would include the current Civil and Criminal Courts in New York City, the Nassau and Suffolk District Courts, and the sixty-one City Courts outside New York City”. The proposal included “a Fifth Department of the Appellate Division, and expansion of the pool of judges eligible for the Appellate Division; it ended the constitutional cap on the number of Supreme Court judgeships that could be created by the Legislature”, she said.
- Judicial elections. - Among the pressing challenges facing New York is “the federal court directive to fashion a new system for selecting Supreme Court Justices”. Kaye said that “the federal declaration that our current convention system is unconstitutional presents another opportunity for positive change”. She asked: “Can we design a system that balances the rights of voters and candidates with the vital interests in preserving the independence, integrity, diversity and quality of Supreme Court Justices in a state as unique as New York?”.
The Commission to Promote Public Confidence in Judicial Elections “concluded that, absent public financing, the alternative of open primaries poses a grave risk of partisan campaign spending that can only damage public confidence in the Judiciary”. Kaye reported.
The Commission recommended ‘independent qualification commissions” created by legislation (not only by court rule) as a part of the overall solution. Voters should know that each choice has been found qualified by independent evaluators, Kaye said.
NY has a Judicial Campaign Ethics Center, the first of its kind in the nation. It serves as a central resource on judicial campaign ethics, offering rapid, reliable advice to candidates in the course of fast-paced campaigns and campaign ethics training through live and simulcast sessions. The Center’s web site (www.nycourts.gov/ip/jcec) includes a Judicial Campaign Ethics Handbook, links to the Rules Governing Judicial Conduct and searchable campaign-related opinions of the Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics. In 2005 and 2006, the Center spearheaded statewide online voter guides with profiles of each candidate and general information about the courts.
- Village courts. - The NY judiciary includes not only state-paid courts but also 1,277 locally administered Town and Village Justice Courts and their nearly 2,000 locally selected justices. Justice Courts hear millions of cases every year, including civil matters where the amount in issue is no more than $3,000, criminal arraignments, misdemeanors, traffic infractions and other violations.
Kaye has adopted an Action Plan for the Justice Courts that calls for collaboration with towns and villages, as well as the support of the Executive and Legislative Branches. It adopted recommendations of the NY Indigent Defense Commission that Justice Courts electronically record all proceedings relating to felonies, misdemeanors and violations.
“We will enlarge the system for training Justices and staff, to see they have the tools they need to properly manage their courts; and we will take steps to assure that Justice Courts protect the rights of indigent parties and those not fluent in English. We will conduct a full security assessment of every Justice Court to help localities meet their responsibility to provide safe court facilities, and we will increase funding for the Justice Court Assistance Program so that localities can make critical facility and security investments”, Kay stated.
- Family justice — whether child-related issues, domestic violence cases or matrimonials -- . represented almost a quarter of NY court dockets, Kaye reported. As of last count, there were 27,364 children in foster care in New York State. These children were technically in the care of the State.
Kaye stated that in 2006 the NY court system brought together county teams of judges, lawyers and social services officials to devise new local initiatives on foster care. They unveiled the “The Child in Child Welfare and the Courts: New York State Court and Child Welfare Data Book 2006,” a county-specific data book with vital court and child welfare information for every one of New York’s sixty-two counties, prepared by the Permanent Judicial Commission on Justice for Children in collaboration with the court system, the State Office of Children and Family Services, and the Council on Children and Families.
The Family Court in New York City has initiated new calendar control measures, and one family/one judge teams to streamline permanency hearings. Financial support cases have been expedited; Night Court has been expanded to all five boroughs; a Youth Advisory Board (including former foster children) has been established to assist the courts; Judicial Hearing Officers and Referees increasingly participate in up-front screening and resolution; and new materials have been developed, in several languages and formats, on domestic violence, custody and visitation, child protection and financial support.
In 2007 Kaye said the NY famklycourts system initiated a Self-Represented Legal Service Project in Brooklyn Family Court, to afford unrepresented low-income litigants free legal advice in the courthouse from specially trained law firm and corporate pro bono attorneys.
Kay said NY court system needed more Family Court Judges. “We now have just 154 Family Court Judges statewide — 49 in New York City and 105 outside the City. Aside from the pressures and demands of the stressful cases brought to Family Court, the volume of filings continues to soar, with the number expected to break a staggering 700,000 this year. The bottom line is that we are desperately short of judicial resources, and we are therefore asking the Legislature to create thirty-nine additional Family Court judgeships statewide, to enable us to meet the needs of Family Court calendars”. Kay stated.
“Improving court process will continue to be a top priority for us also in the area of matrimonial litigation. Too much money, too much delay, too much agony”, Kaye said. The NY courts system has a Committee to Examine Lawyer Conduct in Matrimonial Actions, which had “promulgated matrimonial rules that helped curb abuses and streamline the divorce process”. The court system had formed the Matrimonial Commission ‘to take a comprehensive look at matrimonial litigation”. Kaye said she continued to support no-fault divorce urged by the Commission. (See: www.nycourts.gov/ip/matrimonial-matters, which includes an updated packet of forms for uncontested divorces, many of which can be completed online, plus a newsletter highlighting recent judicial decisions in matrimonial cases).
Kaye said the NY family courts will continue the experiment with a Model Custody Part—called Children Come First—which promises more effective resolution of custody disputes. “Children Come First provides early screening and services, such as parent education programs, comprehensive evaluations and development of parenting plans”, Kaye said. Pilots were ongoing in Nassau, Erie and Tompkins Counties.
Finally in the area of matrimonials, Kaye stated that when used appropriately, “ADR can reduce the delay, expense and trauma of divorce”. She has opened the first court-based Collaborative Family Law Center in the nation. Kasye stated, “Parties and their attorneys who participate in this process agree, either before commencing an action or on court referral, to use their best efforts to resolve all issues relating to dissolution of marriage with minimum conflict and without litigation. The end result is a settlement agreement, which can then be used to obtain a divorce. Our new Center, situated in downtown Manhattan, will serve New York City’s five counties. There we will train attorneys, provide space for participants, and connect families with professional services such as child development specialists, financial services, mental health services and substance abuse treatment. We anticipate that spouses who choose this approach will find that the financial and emotional cost of divorce is reduced for everyone involved—surely a step in the right direction”.
- Probation. - In 2006, there were 1.23 million filings in NY criminal courts.
Kaye said, “Many of the structural systems that support the work of the criminal courts, such as the probation and indigent defense systems, are financed and administered by other branches and agencies, sometimes making it difficult for us to seamlessly work together toward the common goal of ensuring a high standard of justice in every case. The Judiciary has an obligation to step forward and serve as the catalyst for reform, because the bottom line is simple: we rely on these systems to accomplish our constitutional mission, and when they suffer, the quality of justice in our courts inevitably suffers”.
That was why, she added, she had established both a Probation Task Force and an Indigent Defense Commission and continued to place such high priority on improving interagency data-sharing among the courts and other criminal justice stakeholders at all levels of government.
Since its introduction to the United States in 1841, probation has emerged as the most cost-efficient, effective means of ending the cycle of crime by giving an offender a chance at rehabilitation, Kaye said. A lynchpin of the criminal justice system, probation provides the objective information needed by other justice partners in making many critical pretrial and post-conviction determinations, such as diversion into pretrial release programs, bail, sentencing decisions of incarceration versus alternatives to incarceration, and the length and conditions of the sentence of probation or incarceration. In addition to providing important counseling and social services to offenders, probation serves a critical law enforcement role by ensuring that persons sentenced to probation abide by the conditions of sentence set forth in the contracts they entered into with the court.
Kaye reprted that there were 120,000 probationers—approximately an equal number of felons and misdemeanants—being supervised by probation officers across the State at an annual cost of $4,000 per probationer. While the State reaps the benefits associated with probationary sentences for those felons who would otherwise be incarcerated in state prison, the State has failed to live up to its statutory bargain of contributing fifty percent toward the costs incurred by local probation departments. She addeed, “In last year’s State of the Judiciary address, I announced formation of a Task Force on the Future of Probation in New York State…We asked the Task Force to tell us how we could strengthen a probation system that is critically overburdened and underfinanced; has too few officers, too few caseworkers and little current technology to enforce probation sentences; and has enforcement policies that vary from county to county”.
In a report being (www.nycourts.gov/reports/futureprobation_2007.pdf), the Task Force pointed to the continuing decline in State funding to the Division of Probation and Correctional Alternatives (DPCA), the State agency charged with overseeing local probation departments, and to the local departments themselves. To reverse this downward spiral and improve the statewide probation system, the Task Force has suggested that the Judicial Branch should assume the probation oversight and funding functions currently carried out by the Executive Branch, while leaving untouched local government control over the day-to-day delivery of probation services, including the continued appointment of Probation Directors by County Executives.
Kaye stated that the Commission on the Future of Indigent Defense Services had issued its final report concluding that New York’s indigent defense system is in severe disarray and should be replaced with a statewide system governed by consistent regulations and standards. Although most defenders were dedicated and diligent, the Commission documented how the system was so poorly designed, so badly fractured between the State and localities, and so overburdened that only a complete overhaul would suffice, she said.
- Focus groups. - In 1998, NY adopted a Differentiated Case Management Program, categorizing cases based on their level of complexity, with specified time frames for milestones throughout the life of a case.
In 2007 NY has formed Focus Groups on Reducing Litigation Cost and Delay to review how past and present judicial reforms have fared in their objectives. These frank and open discussions will help assure that the court system always remains responsive to its users Kaye said.
On the civil front, NY has experimented with Summary Jury Trials — one-day trials that combine the flexibility and cost effectiveness of arbitration with the structure of a conventional trial. “This procedure has proved to be a highly effective tool for the disposition of civil cases”, Kaye added.
- Guardians. - “Over the last six years, we have worked tirelessly to improve the fiduciary appointment system in New York. We have established a registration process for fiduciaries, adopted restrictions on fees and imposed limitations on eligibility for appointment”, Kay said. “We are working to keep pace with the challenges presented by guardianship cases, particularly to ensure that guardians fulfill their responsibilities on behalf of incapacitated persons”.
The Model Guardianship Part, which began as a pilot project in Suffolk County in 2005, would be expanded to Queens County. These parts integrated all pending cases involving an incapacitated person before a single judge, accelerate review of any allegations of physical or financial abuse, mediate family conflict, and utilize trained volunteers to monitor the status of incapacitated persons, Kaye said. “We have created a Guardianship Assistance Network in Kings County to serve as a support center for lay guardians. Each year, in New York City alone, about 1,500 family members and friends are appointed to serve as guardians of incapacitated persons. These lay guardians must navigate a complex maze of programs and legal requirements, including securing Medicaid and Medicare benefits, arranging for home care and complying with many different statutory filing requirements. Now they finally have a resource to ease their difficult task.”
- Access to civil justice. - Finding a permanent funding scheme for civil legal services has long been at the forefront of the court system’s Access to Justice initiatives. “We are all too well aware that, overwhelmingly, the need for civil legal services for the poor is not being met”, Kaye stated. “For the coming fiscal year, the Judiciary Budget includes an appropriation of five million dollars from the State’s Legal Services Assistance Fund to supplement the funds in the Executive Budget. To facilitate this appropriation, we are seeking approval of a modest increase in our criminal history search fee from fifty two to sixty dollars, with six dollars of the increase allocated to this purpose”.
Kaye said that the statewide pro bono initiative — a grassroots effort that partners the bench, bar, legal educators, legal services providers and advocates for the poor on Local Pro Bono Action Committees—continued to grow. CLE programs offered in exchange for a pro bono commitment have signed up nearly two hundred attorneys in Syracuse and more than one hundred in the Ninth District.
Kaye stated: “To ensure access to justice for the estimated 1.8 million litigants who appear without lawyers — some by choice, some for financial reasons — it was essential that programs be developed that help them navigate the court system. Fortunately, we have made significant strides, currently serving a majority of these litigants with a network of resources: offices dedicated to helping self-represented litigants; direct assistance from court-based staff in metropolitan area family and housing courts; public access computer terminals; special training for court employees on assisting the self-represented; and a web site (www.nycourthelp.gov) containing information, links and forms, soon to have important interactive features”.
NY has a Center for Court Innovation, which is its independent research and development arm in helping spread the idea of problem-solving justice across New York. Kaye said, “I’m proud to report that problem-solving reforms—providing judges with better information, linking victims and nonviolent offenders to needed services, engaging citizens in “doing justice,” and using data to improve the accountability of courts — continue to gather momentum across the State. Today, we have more than 250 problem-solving courts in New York State, overseen by Deputy Chief Administrative Judge Judy Harris Kluger. These include specialized drug courts that are sentencing addicted offenders to drug treatment instead of incarceration, community courts that are addressing neighborhood crime problems, Integrated Domestic Violence Courts and specialized domestic violence courts that are providing desperately needed services to victims of abusive partners, and mental health courts that are linking mentally ill offenders to community-based treatment.”
- Jury reform. - Kaye stated that she would complete a Best Practices Guide for jury system administration in New York, “codifying the lessons learned from our fourteen years of jury reform and updating it with ongoing innovation”. Within the Office of Court Administration Kaye would form a Jury System Academy so that judges and jury staff throughout the State stay current about best practices and the very latest research. Kaye would create a new position within the Office of Court Administration—a Statewide Commissioner of Jurors—with responsibility to support jury operations, assure continuous jury reform, keep the Best Practices Guide up to date and oversee the Jury System Academy. The cadre of Jury Trial Project judges will continue encouraging their colleagues to implement some of the established innovations, such as juror note-taking, preliminary instructions and allowing written juror questions.
- Technology. - In 2006 Kaye highlighted a program called Partners in Justice, which began as a collaboration with clinical professors representing New York State’s fifteen law schools. (See: “The Four Cs: Collateral Consequences of Criminal Charges” at www2.law.columbia.edu/fourcs). The success of this joint effort led to a groundbreaking initiative, the Collateral Consequences Calculator, that actually thinks for itself, Kaye said. The site was developed by students from the Columbia Law School’s Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic.
Kaye stated: “Using a computer from work, home or the library, for example, the public can visit our web site—free of charge—to get all sorts of information about the courts, ranging from the date of the next appearance in a case, to judges’ decisions, and even in some instances to actual documents filed by the parties. In 2006, we enhanced online access to information on Supreme Court civil cases in all of New York’s sixty-two counties by launching WebCivil Supreme. We continued providing WebCRIMS service for twentyone criminal courts in thirteen counties, making more information available. And we added Family Court cases in all sixty-two counties, providing helpful information to lawyers and litigants while withholding party names to protect the privacy and security of litigants. Next month, our pilot in Broome County will begin to make electronic copies of many court documents available on the Internet. In addition, more than a quarter of a million judicial decisions are now available on our Web site for free downloading. Finally, New York County has made its Supreme Court Records On-Line Library available over the Internet, providing remote access to case information and records in civil cases”.
According to Kaye, “One of the benefits of our electronic filing (or “E-filing”) program is that it has reduced the mountain of paper. This year we will be introducing a program called Automated Filing (or “A-Filing”), which will enable us to accept electronic documents in civil cases. These documents will include certain civil filings, small claims filings, preliminary conference orders and stipulations of adjournment. Although delivered through the Internet, the electronic documents will not be available for Internet viewing. By reducing trips to the courthouse and the volume of paper, this new A-Filing system will help reduce some of the cost and inconvenience of the current system for everyone”.
NY has implemented a variety of telephone-based information systems. Kaye said, “Therefore, this year we will implement a system, modeled on New York City’s highly successful “311” non-emergency telephone line, that will provide the public with a single phone number for court information. A dedicated team of specially trained personnel will answer these questions, as well as email inquiries, to ensure that no one is denied access to justice because he or she cannot get fast and correct answers to questions about our court system”.
By law, all attorneys admitted to practice in the State of New York—resident or nonresident, active or retired, practicing in New York or anywhere else—are required to renew their attorney registration every two years, within thirty days of their birthday. Kaye said. “With 225,000 registered attorneys, maintaining the current paper-based system is labor intensive for the court system and cumbersome for attorneys, who must submit the fee and registration information by mail or in person. Also, attorney information in a paper-based system is likely to go out of date quickly, which affects our case management systems that use attorney registration data as a reference. Thus, this year we will begin building an automated attorney registration system that will permit attorneys to pay their registration fee and update their registration information through the web. This system will also send an email reminder to the attorney when registration is due or overdue. Although online registration will not be mandatory, the fact that one-quarter of attorneys already are using credit cards to pay the fee tells us that a web-based system will likely be welcomed by the bar”.
- Fees. – Kaye said that over the years, she had expanded the number of courts “that accept credit card payments, experimented with using a private collection firm, and explored intercepting tax refunds to satisfy unpaid court sanctions”.
She added: “With acceptance of credit cards will come online payments that make compliance more convenient and more efficient, and a uniform cashiering system will make possible a single database of judgment debtors that will simplify and speed enforcement. We will work to integrate this uniform database into the operations of allied agencies to create, for the first time in State history, one single system for statewide enforcement of court-ordered payments. The result will be more accurate accounting, more secure payments, more efficient administration and better compliance with court mandates”.
By:
Atty. Manuel J. Laserna Jr.
