This month the New York State Legislature began, for the umpteenth time, entertaining proposals for reform to this State’s "lower courts". These tribunals make up an array of local, town, village, and justice courts throughout the state, but with greater use and influence in the northern and western territories. They are distinguished from the higher Courts in several respects, are funded by the locality that they serve, and can handle cases than run the gamut from traffic infractions to misdemeanors to parking violations to civil disputes among neighbors. And while these courts are supposed to apply the same laws, rules, regulations, methods and standards as New York's higher Courts, they are in fact most distinguished by their differences.

In this state the Court system is organized essentially from the top down: the highest court is the Court of Appeals, which, as its name implies, is the last word in Appellate review. Cases come to this court almost exclusively from the four Appellate Divisions, geographically organized around the state. Below these four "Departments" there are the Supreme Courts, the lowest State Courts in the system - one for each county. These are trial courts, from which appeals can go up the ladder. However, the counties, villages and towns - in an homage to America’s pioneer spirit hearkening back to the days when upper New York State was still the frontier - have retained the right and power to create and fund their own local courts for local issues. Currently there are more than 1200 of them operating throughout the state.

The state courts we have spoken of already are all "courts of record"; as are county courts, city courts, criminal courts, family courts and the Court of Claims. These smaller, local courts are not, and that is a crucial difference. Appeals are all done upon a record: that is, a written or recorded transcript of what actually took place in Court. Thus can our Appellate Justices, as well as the public, see what happened and correct any mistakes that might have occurred. Without such a record, there is no way to go back after the fact and determine whether a person got a fair trial or not! Now, even though technology has advanced so far that most weddings are now caught forever on video, these local courts routinely levy fines, probation, jail sentences community service and revocation of various rights with no more than a written summary in a ledger-book. Sometimes not even that much.

Despite rising standards for legal education throughout the nation as well as a commensurate improvement in the schooling, experience, qualifications, scholarship and street-savvy for the Judges who sit in the courts of record, the level of acceptability for lower court justices remains shockingly low. To be a local judge, justice of the peace or magistrate one need not be a lawyer, or a college graduate, or even a collegiate attendee. A high school diploma is not required. The only thing one must have to serve in such a capacity is one more vote than anybody else who wanted the job: the only preparation you will need will be one week’s training given to you at the start of your term, and an occasional week’s refresher course as you continue to serve!

This being the case, it is little wonder that people have been consigned to: jail without trial, trials without the right to counsel, indefinite sentencing (such as doing chores for the judge for so long as the judge feels you should), and manifold indignities in sham proceedings that would shock us if we were subjected to them in a foreign land. Yet they go on every week here in New York.

On occasion, these local judges take on the mantle of a local satrap, much like a Tennessee Williams' villain from a bygone era. They become emperors with vast unchecked power over the poor, underrepresented and the unpopular in small pockets of the state. Yet they are very nominally regulated, overseen or checked upon by the Office for Court Administration.

These courts have enjoyed a peculiar popularity amongst community leaders in many parts of New York, and they have been notoriously difficult to reform. They have survived several major efforts at Legislative overhaul, always being spared in one political deal or another, which has allowed their excesses and inadequacies to remain below the news radar most of the time. The power bases that these courts both represent and perpetuate will take an act of uncommon will and commitment to be altered.

Since "business as usual" will be expected to change now according to our Governor-elect, that should extend as well to changing the usual business that has gone unchanged for well over a century. On “Day One”, one could do far worse than to make the return of justice to our lower courts "Job 1."