Authorizes the legislature to increase the number of justices of the supreme court in any judicial district

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why the sponsor says this is needed

New York's court system is demonstrably and impossibly backlogged. A common-sense solution would be to add more judges to overburdened courts, but an archaic provision of the New York State Constitution arbitrarily caps the number of legislatively authorized Supreme Court seats at one justice per 50,000 people in each judicial district. However, the number of cases processed by New York courts annually has tripled since the cap was last amended in the early 1960s, and liti- gation has become more time-consuming and complex. State Supreme Courts in The Bronx, Manhattan, and the Capital District are currently at their constitutionally-capped number of justices and Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island are close, meaning the Legislature is powerless to create additional judicial seats to meet the ever-growing backlog of cases. The judicial backlog emanating from the constitutional cap leads to substan- tial delays in the administration of justice, not to mention increased costs and agony for litigants. Worse, as a stopgap measure to ensure the functioning of courts in capped districts, judges are designated from other courts to hear cases on an acting basis, reducing both expertise and judicial capacity elsewhere in the state. The Uncap Justice Act would simply strike the constitutional cap on the number of Supreme Court justices. It does not increase the number of judges in any judicial district, but instead gives the legislature the flexibility to enact legislation as needed in order to deliberately and appropriately create new seats in state Supreme Court districts where the need is greatest, similar to how the Legislature creates judicial seats for every other state trial court. The people of New York State are entitled to a modern, flexible, evidence-based method of assessing the state's judicial needs, as is the case in many other states and the federal judiciary. Until this bill is passed and the cap is removed, New Yorkers will be barred from the justice they so desperately seek in our Supreme Court. While other reforms are also necessary, this amendment is vital - and long overdue.

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.