Relates to requiring certain town and village justices be admitted to practice law in the state

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why the sponsor says this is needed

Justice Courts are town and village courts. These small local courts are sometimes referred to as magistrate courts. Justice courts have juris- diction over both civil and criminal matters including small claims; landlord-tenant issues, including evictions; prosecution of misdemea- nors; arraignments and preliminary hearings for felonies; and traffic infractions. Despite the crucial role that justice courts play in the state legal system, they are underfunded and have little oversight. There are disparities across the state in the quality of facilities and in the salaries the courts can offer. There is also no requirement that a justice court judge be a licensed attorney. At present, New York is one of only eight states to allow non-lawyer judges to hand down jail sentences for misdemeanors without the right to a new trial before a lawyer-judge. The other seven are Arizona, Montana, Colorado, Texas, Wyoming, Nevada, and South Carolina. And Montana only permits the prac- tice in rural and or sparsely populated counties. In the context of criminal proceedings and eviction cases, the lack of attorney judges raises some due process issues. Most, if not all, crimi- nal cases involve a deprivation of liberty or property. Eviction cases, by their very nature, threaten the deprivation of property. It is a well-established legal principle that such cases be taken very serious- ly, and that due care and thought be given to the decision-making proc- ess. Criminal defendants have a right to be represented by an attorney, and the dissent in a 1976 US Supreme Court case, North v. Russell, asserted that just as criminal defendants have a right to be represented by an attorney, they also have a due process right to appear before an attorney-judge. While North v. Russeficlearly established this right, it left it up to the states to decide how they want to protect it. Many smaller localities lack the resources and docket to attract an attorney to serve as the town or village justice. This bill imposes a requirement only on those localities that have the largest number of arraignments in the state, so as to maximize the number of defendants who appear before lawyer-judges without putting an undue burden on smaller localities. The requirements this bill would impose on the 100 highest-arraignment volume courts are identical to the requirements to serve as a judge in the Uniform City Court Act.

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.