The caseload of the Appellate Division,
First Department, has reflected the rich and complex
texture of life in New York City.
In 1946, Chief Justice Stone of the U.S. Supreme Court,
said of the Appellate Division, First Department, that
it “in fact transacted more judicial business...
than any other court in the world.” Now, fifty
years later, the Court is still the pre-eminent state
appellate court in the nation.
The First court system in New York was established
by Peter Stuyvesant when the city, then known as New
Amsterdam was still a Dutch colony. When in the seventeenth
century New Amsterdam was surrendered to the British
and became New York, the courts began to follow the
English common law model. However, by the late nineteenth
century, the existing court system had become inefficient,
wasteful and inadequate to the needs of the day.
An overwhelming public demand for reform led to the
1894 Constitutional Convention. It was out of that convention
that the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of
New York was born.
The Constitutional Convention convened
on May 15, 1894, electing Joseph H. Choate as President.
Elihu Root, a prominent New York City attorney, was
appointed to lead the judiciary committee that was to
make recommendations for amending Article VI of the
New York State Constitution, which governed the judiciary.
Joseph H. Choate
When the Constitutional Convention began to prepare
its changes to the State Constitution, Root, although
a powerful and influential Republican, worked closely
with Louis Marshall, a Democrat from Onondaga County,
to develop the proposed revisions.
In his opening address to the Convention, Root noted
the two evils that needed remedy were the great delays
in bringing cases to trial and in securing the final
disposition of cases on appeal. Many of the difficulties
that plagued the judiciary system resulted from the
confusing patchwork of courts in existence at the time.
The two concerns of the Judiciary committee
were interrelated: there had to be a more efficient
use of judicial resources; and there had to be greater
public confidence in the judiciary System itself.
The two issues seemed to go together. The Court of
Appeals had found its caseload increasing because parties
had no respect for the decisions of the lower courts.
The Legislature had created so many grounds for appeal
to the Court of Appeals that virtually every decision
of a lower court was appealed. Many of the lower court
decisions were appealed to what was the precursor of
Division, the General Term of the Supreme Court. However,
the same judges who sat in the trial courts also served
in the General Term; this led, in smaller judicial districts,
to the situation where a judge might well be one of
three appellate judges hearing an appeal of his own
decision as a trial judge.
To eliminate the deficiencies of the existing system,
the judiciary committee put forth recommendations that
included the consolidation of Superior city Courts with
the Supreme Court, the creation of an effective intermediate
appellate court with broader jurisdiction and powers,
and thelimiting of the powers of the Court of Appeals
to declaring and settling of law only. In order to lessen
the pressure on the calendar of the Court of Appeals,
a newly-created Appellate Division was to have a final
say on questions of fact and on all interlocutory proceedings.
Thus, the General Terms of the Supreme Court were abolished,
as were the Court of Oyer And Terminer, and the Circuit
Courts. All these were subsumed under the jurisdiction
of the Supreme Court.
The Appellate Division
was created during this reorganization.
Transcripts of the debate at the convention indicate
that the judiciary committee from the outset considered
the Appellate Division to be one level of the Supreme
Court, divided into four
departments. Its jurisdiction, just as that of the Supreme
Court, was understood by the delegates to be statewide;
it was divided into departments for the sake of judicial
efficiency. The Justices of the Appellate Division were
to be elected in the same manner as other Supreme Court
Justices, for the same Supreme Court terms of fourteen
years, and then were to be appointed by the Governor
to sit in the Appellate Division. The Constitutional
Convention authorized five Justices for the First Department,
a number constitutionally increased to seven in 1925.
This number has been augmented by gubernatorial appointments,
on certification of need by the Court’s Presiding
Justice. Currently, thirteen Justices sit in the First
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