Home -> Law Blog Directory -> New York Blogs -> Jamestown Lawyer

New York

: Jamestown Lawyer

Courts

By TM

A brief post. No guarantees any more will follow it.

There is an effort underway to improve the Justice Court system. Judicial districts are hiring persons, preferably former Justice Court judges, to serve as resources on administrative and legal issues.

My thought: that won't be enough. There's a certain attraction to the tradition of local lay judges that know the community and dispense a common-sense justice. There, to me, is even more attraction to courts that are open regular hours and staffed by professional persons.

Perhaps one of the changes required of the Justice Courts should be like the policy when I was a college instructor: mandatory office hours. On one day, at least two days from the weekly court day, the judge or clerk must be in the office. If nothing else, it's a time to do paperwork. It is somehow sublimely ridiculous that we have courts that are "open" at the discretion of a judge, who shows up to do everything from reading the mail to hearing cases one evening a week, then puts it on the back burner until that next evening appearance. Justice and Monday Night Football should not have the same schedule.

Full post as published by Jamestown Lawyer on November 08, 2007 (boomark / email).