Campus Press Conference; Stanley H. Lowell, Assistant to the Mayor of New York City; Muni

What is the problem in our courts? What has the mayor done about court reform? In your opinion, what will be the city's attitude to the Tweed Commission recommendations? What is the result of the people of New York of an inadequate court system? Well, the answers to these and other questions listen now to your city station's campus press conference in which the editors of college newspapers interview prominent personalities in the news. Our moderator for this transcribed program is Marvin Sleeper, award-winning reporter for the New York Journal American. Here now to introduce our panel and tonight's guest is Mr. Sleeper. Good evening and welcome to another edition of campus press conference. Our guest tonight is Mr. Stanley H. Lowell, assistant to the mayor. Mr. Lowell is one of the mayor's closest, closest advisors on important city affairs. And right now he is knee deep in preparing a report on the reorganization of the court system within the city. The temporary commission on the courts has issued a complete plan for the reorganization of the system throughout the state. It prescribes that the new system would operate in a different manner in New York City

than it would in other parts of the state. That's because of the differing problems of the metropolitan area and the upstate communities. It all boils down to getting our town a more efficient and economical court system. So let's find out how the city proposes to do this. Here to question Mr. Lowell, our campus press conference reporter is Penny Fox of the Hunter College Arrow, Jim Farrell of the Fordham Ram, Larry Lipsitz of the NYU Square Journal, and Bruno Wassophile of the CCNY Observation Post. And how about the first question from you, Jim Farrell? Mr. Lowell, what is the problem in our courts? Well Jim, the problem in our courts really is an antiquated system which has been patched up over these many, many years with no real reorganization of the entire court system. I believe in something like 50 or 60 years. What does this result in? It's resulted, unfortunately, in a great many difficulties in our court system. We've had many defects. First of all, it's our opinion that the courts are too expensive for what we get for them. Secondly, there's no organizational unity within the courts.

The administration of the courts is rather haphazard. And you have frequently different court systems within our city. We have eight principal courts, eight or nine principal courts in the city, which administer things for themselves and have no real unified operation. There should be a unified administration system. In addition to that, and more important for the average person, the unfortunate situation within our courts makes for delayed justice. And I think this is perhaps really the thing that the average person would be concerned about. In my opinion, the time has very ripe for a reorganization of our court system. Well, has anyone ever done anything about it? In these past 50 or 60 years? Well, Mr. Sleeper, there's been a lot done about it, but never a complete reorganization which is now being contemplated. Over these period of the last 40 or 50 years, we've created new courts when they were appeared to be necessary. They've been additional judges added to the courts by the state legislature as the growth of cases in the various types of courts resulted

in the need for more judicial personnel. But there's been no attempt to do what was done and, incidentally, by the federal system back in 1938, where they completely reorganized the entire federal court system. Now we think New York should have that. Many folks. Mr. Lowell specifically, what does the Tweet Commission report to do and actually propose? Well, I don't know if I can answer that in a very few moments. Penny, here's, let me say first of all, that what we have here in our great city are approximately, as I said, eight courts. You have civil courts, which start with the municipal court at the lowest level, which has cases up to $3,000. Then the city court, which has cases up to $6,000, and the Supreme Court, which has unlimited jurisdiction. On the other side of that same coin, you flip it over, you find three other courts. The magistrate's court, which is the lowest criminal court, the special session's court, which tries misdemeanors, and the general sessions or county courts, which take care of felonies, the highest so-called criminal court. Then above them, you have an appellate division

for appeals and a court of appeals above that. Now, in addition to these six regular trial courts, plus the two appeal courts, we have two other very, very important courts in New York. One, the domestic relations court, which concerns itself in part with family matters, and matters between husband and wife, and concerns itself with children, and the surrogates court, which, of course, you know, is the probate court, which concerns itself with problems of wills. Now, that's what our present court structure is. Well, Bruno, why is the foul? What is the result of the average citizen of New York in adequate court system? I mean, a person who doesn't happen to have a case pending? Well, can I hold that question for me? Can I hold that question for me in a Bruno bite to respond more fully to what Jim said to me before? I gave you what the court system was, but I ought to answer what the quick commission wants to do. Now, these eight or nine courts that would I have described, what we want to do here is to break those eight or nine courts down and make in reality two courts, the tweed commission wants to make in reality two courts in the city of New York, a general court,

and retain the Supreme Court. But this Supreme Court would take care of civil and criminal matters of the highest type of the general sessions and county courts would go in with the Supreme Court, and the surrogates court would go in with the Supreme Court, and then the municipal court, the city court, the magistrates court, the special sessions court, and finally, the domestic relations court, which is extremely important, would go into the general court. And then, of course, this week, commission has a lot of other suggestions as well, but this, you see, would change us from an eight or nine court structure down to a two court structure. Now, let me have your question, Bruno, again. Well, to the average citizen of New York and the case pending, what does this inadequate court system mean? What is its result? Well, if you're a woman, Bruno, or maybe let's take Penny here. Well, one of you is a young woman, and you've got a child, and you've got a real problem because your husband isn't supporting you, or he may have deserted you, and you don't want to get a divorce from him, or you're not sure what you want, you go to a lawyer, and you want to resolve this various problems you've gotten.

Before he left you, just husband of yours, Bruno, he took a crack at you and punched you in the jaw. Now, you have to go to resolve your matrimonial difficulties, to take care of the punch in the jaw to the magistrates court. If you're not sure of your marriage to him, and maybe the baby you had was born out of wedlock, to prove he's the father you have to go to the special sessions court, to take care of the problem of a divorce or a separation or a norm when you have to go to the Supreme Court, and finally, if you want to take care of the question of support or custody of the child under certain circumstances, you have to go to the domestic relations court. That's what it would mean to a woman who has a problem of this kind, and what we hope to do in the reorganization of the courts is not have this hidden mis-fragmentation of our court structure. It also means if you're a man and you had an automobile accident, and you want to sue because your car was destroyed and your wife was injured or you were injured, for over $6,000 in the Supreme Court, that you might have to wait up to 39 or 40 months. That's over three years before your case could be brought to trial by a jury, that is, not a non-jury case, but by a jury,

and have a determination made us to the responsibility of the person who injured you or your wife in an automobile accident or any kind of a tort or who damaged your automobile or vehicle. Well, that illustrates what would happen if you have a case or such things might come up. But I'd like to know for the majority of the citizens of New York, which I don't, who don't have anything right now, except perhaps a traffic violation. A traffic violation? Traffic violation. Well, say, even not a traffic violation, but I mean, what does it mean to them in courts and taxes and direct influence like that? You've got a very interesting question because it's, I jotted down a couple of figures here, the courts in New York City cost the city of New York $35 million. A little bit more than $35 million. Of that figure of $35 million, oh, in addition to that, the state, by the way, contributes $1,200,000. So of the total cost of $36,300,000,

the state contributes $1,200,000, and the city of New York has to bear the entire cost out of its own taxes of another $35 million. In addition to that, the salaries here in New York for our court system are $24 million, which, interestingly enough, is the cost of the entire federal court system. Mr. Lowell, how, approximately, how much would the proposed court structures save the city in both time and money? Well, it's hard to say. Nobody knows specifically whether it would reduce the amount of the costs. You've got 8 million people serviced by these various courts and these various, this court system that we've got. What we want to do, in addition to eliminating inefficiencies and strengthening the court system, and letting judges be interchanged between courts and used where they're really needed, rather than be stuck in a court which has no work, while judges in courts which have too much work can't handle the cases they've got. What we want to do most important of all is to increase the efficiency of the courts in the way of handling justice

and in the way of obtaining justice. That means getting people to get trials of their cases on time and not requiring people to run hit and miss from one court to another in order to resolve their disputes. What has the Wagner administration already done about court reform? Well, this is primarily, as you know, or as you should know, a state problem, not a city problem. We have really very little control, legally, that is, over the entire court structure. That's the reason why, about six or eight years ago, what was referred to in the few moments at the beginning of our talk here, the Tweed Commission was appointed. That's the Temporary State Commission on the Courts. They have proposed a simplified state-wide court system this year. Now, the mayor has done the following. In addition, of course, to strengthening the various courts which we service here in New York by adding judges and special sessions by increasing probation funds, psychiatric needs in the domestic relations court, and the magistrates court in the court of special sessions. In addition to that, the mayor anticipating the fact

that this Tweed Commission report was going to come out calling for a complete reorganization of our courts and wanting to get the best possible advice and thought on the subject. About six months ago, appointed, what we call the mayor's committee on the courts, which consists of 36 very prominent men and women here in our city. The chairman is Alan Klotz, who is the former president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. It has people on it like Lawrence Rockveller and Paul Hayes, Professor of Law at Columbia, the president of the Women's City Club, the head of the League of Women Voters, the representative of the Citizens Union, representatives of medicine, the three principal faiths, for example, the Board of Rabbis, the partisan council, the head of Catholic Charities and Brooklyn, all these various people of whom I think only eight are lawyers. And the remainder, remaining ones are prominent persons, interested in social problems, and religious problems, and overall problems of our city, including businessmen, who are interested in the prompt trial of their breach of contract actions, for example. This group has been meeting during the past six months,

and within this coming month, during the next three or four weeks, will report to the mayor their own views on court reorganization here in our city. Mr. Lowell, is there anything else that you feel the mayor can do in the area of court reform? Well, what the mayor is going to do, in addition to appointing this committee, is to take their recommendations to him, which they give to him, and study them, and go over them, and analyze them, and then when the temporary state commission's proposals come before the legislature, as they will, you know that Governor Haramon indicated general sympathy with them when it was released last month, the mayor is then going to make his own recommendations, both to the governor and to the state legislature, about his view of this. Well, now, can you give us some idea of what these recommendations that the mayor's committee will make? Well, of course, they're not final yet, Mr. Sleeper. But in general, I would say that the mayor's committee on the courts will support the proposals in general for changing our present eight court structure,

or nine court structure, down to what is an essence of two court structure. There is a sharp difference of agreement among the members of the mayor's committee on the courts, as to whether or not family court matters. Those are problems involving family and children, and the like. I should think that you discussed a little while ago. Well, we all agree that it should go into one court, but there is a strong group, and we don't know yet whether it's a minority or a majority, which feels that these family court matters should be handled in a different court, a court which we might call the family court of the city of New York, so that these very important social problems of person with person, not questions of money, but questions of people's relationship with people, and with husbands and wives and children, that these very important problems be handled in a separate and distinct court. And we, as I say, we don't know what the final result will be. We have a sharp difference of view within the mayor's opinion on the tweet report. Well, the mayor has expressed no opinion yet as to the Tweet Commission report. He's waiting until the mayor's committee

gives its opinion to him. In your opinion, what will be the city's attitude toward the recommendations? Of the Tweet Commission. Yes. I think, as I said before, that the mayor's committee on the courts will, in general, support them. In addition to this two court structure, I gave you one difference. We may be against having the domestic relations court matters, family matters in the same court, but there are other problems which come up. For example, last year, you all remember a proposal was passed the state legislature for 21 new Supreme Court judges. Now, the mayor's committee on the courts may recommend, and it's considering recommending to the mayor, there's been no final decision on that either, that instead of having 21 more Supreme Court judges, which would result in an increased cost to the city, of, we figure in round figures, somewhere between $1 and $2 million, if I recall, that the right amount is. That we just take the present city court judges, who are experienced trial judges, there are 22 of them, and move them up in with the Supreme Court

to help handle the problems of congestion and delay up there where it's most difficult, where the court calendar is most congested, and then we wouldn't have to have an additional 21 judges. Now, this is the city court judges themselves, incidentally, and of course, they're personally interested are proposing also, but it raises another problem, which, Marvin, you'd be able to explain better than the other gentleman, then Lane Lady here. You see, the city court is a mandatory court, and that means they are able to require the city to pay their employees the amount of money that the judges decide they should pay, and they can go into a court and mandamus the city and require them to pay it. Under the Tweet Commission proposals, they're putting this mandatory court to city court in with all these nonmandatory courts, the others that I've described before, whereas all the other mandatory courts, the county court, the Supreme Court, the general sessions court, are going up into the Supreme Court and remaining in the Supreme Court, and we would have an extremely difficult problem here in the city employee-wise,

these are the clerk against clerk, you know, matching what a clerk salary is in one court, and another, if this mandatory court, which has higher clerk salaries, the city had to pay without, outside the career and salary plan completely, will push down in with the general court, and we might run into a very, very expensive proposition, which might increase the costs we think to the city of almost $4 million. Is the city planning to ask for a more state aid to the courts? In the fund and the appropriations by the legislature? The mayor's committee on the courts is strongly backing up the Tweet Commission, which is recommending the elimination of mandatory courts. That means to explain it to you again, that actually a court can decide what it wants to pay its own employees, and even though another clerk doing the same job in the Corporation Council's office, or in the welfare department, is doing identically the same job, the court can require the city actually to pay $1,000 more in salary, or $500 more. We think this is very unfair, and that we've been opposed to it since Wagner came into office, and the Tweet Commission and the mayor's committee

on the courts are all opposed to what it's very unfair, and in an opportunity to have that kind of a system. But what we anticipate is that the structure and the payment of the courts will be changed. And instead of the city being required to pay $35 out of the $36 million cost, the burden will be primarily on the state, with a shift back to the city, which will be fair, a fair proportion of this, commensurate with what other counties in the state, and other large cities in the state pay. And I think the city would then get a financial break. Do you think the legislature would go along with this? Excuse me. Now, what would happen to these 22 city court judges? What about their courts, if they are moved up into the other category? Well, what would happen to their court is that that city court jurisdiction would be completely eliminated. And the city court, which now has cases up to $6,000, the jurisdiction of it would go in with this general court, the general court, as proposed by the Tweet Commission and by the mayor's committee on the courts.

Incidentally, that general court would have jurisdiction of cases up to $10,000. And you'd only have two courts handling civil matters. One up to $10,000, and one above $10,000. But the actual judicial personnel in the city court, those 22 judges, would go and become in effect Supreme Court judges and handle those kind of cases. Now, your question, Larry. Do you think the legislature would go along with that? What I re-equalize the... Well, your guess is really as good as my, Larry. You raise a sensitive point, which we're all familiar with. The state legislature is not very sympathetic to the city's financial needs. It treats us very unfairly. We think down here, we just asked to be treated under the same formula as the people of the rest of the state. And we think that, as you all know from reading the papers and the mayor's shop demands upon the state legislature, that we should be treated equally with the other parts of the state. What they'll do, we don't know. Penny Fox. Mr. Lowell, with regard to the overall structure proposed by the Tweed Commission with regard to re-organization, you pointed out that it is not certain

to save the city any money. Is it likely to cost the city much or anything? We don't think it will cost the city any increased funds. We think that the city will get much better, judicial service, and that it will not cost the people of New York any substantial amount of money over and above its present cost. Question from Jim Fowell. One of the poor political facts of life in our judicial process in this state is the fact that the surrogate's court of each county has become a political plumb for each local organization. Now, this Tweed program absorbs the surrogate's court into the general overall court structure. Will the local organizations go along with this through their legislators? Well, it's not exactly true, Jim, that they absorb it. The Tweed Commission knows the political facts of life, too. And therefore, the Tweed Commission has recommended that while the surrogate's court become part of the Supreme Court for administrative purposes, that it be separately elected, and that the person who is going to be the probate or surrogate,

the person who is going to handle the seed and the states, be a person who is being chosen separately for his term, and who will sit in that part all the time. Frankly, I think they were very smart, as far as the pragmatics of it are concerned, and that this is going to, if this were the only reason why the legislature would not accept the Tweed Commission reports, it would surely be passed, because it seems to me that this takes care of both sides. You get administrative unity, and yet you do have the surrogate's court as a separate entity, where the man who's being chosen for the job by the people through an elective process is chosen for that specific purpose. So not about the various judges. Should they be appointed or elected, generally? Well, I believe strongly in the election of judges, Mr. Sleeper, I think that electing judges, the same as electing a legislative official, and that I believe strongly in democracy, and I believe that the people of the right to choose, and they should choose their judicial offices. I will say that there is a, the mayor's committee on the courts,

has two points of view on this subject. Two, everybody agrees that the Supreme Court judges should be elected. The Tweed Commission has made recommendations that half of this new general court that I described is to be elected, and half is to be appointed by the mayor. You see, because the mayor now appoints all the magistrates, all the special sessions judges, and all the domestic relations court judges, which is a total of approximately 95 or six judges. And the Tweed Commission I'd rather felt that maybe there'd be some opposition to taking away this power from the mayor. Mayor Wagner isn't very at all concerned about his point of power in this area, that the mayor's committee on the courts is now wrestling with whether or not they should recommend that the mayor appoint all these general court judges with some kind of a judicial commission which will act as a screening body for the personnel which will be chosen chosen for our courts. I, speaking only for myself, and very carefully for myself now, I am not in sympathy with this judicial commission idea,

and I am very much in favor of generally speaking of the election of judges, and if it's for the lower courts, and they feel that election is because the principle of the short ballot, which you know, and where people never get around even knowing who's at the end of the ballot, if they don't want to elect the lower court judges, then I would say that they should be appointed by the mayor. Well, now in this report will it be recommended that these 95 judges that you speak of that are now appointed by the mayor be elected? No, the mayor's, as I said, the Tweed Commission splits them down the middle. They say half of them should be appointed and half of them elected. With no clear cut reason, as to why one than the other, they just a year ago were not sure of what their position would be and during the past year they took the position, which is something of a compromise, just putting it in between. Question from Jim Farrell. There would be no change as far as appellate judges go for the court of appeals over the appellate division. These would still be appointed. Oh no, the court of appeals judges are elected and the appellate division judges are appointed only

from the Supreme Court bench after they are elected to the Supreme Court, so that there's no change from the present system of choosing or jurisdiction or what have you of appellate division in court of appeals. Bruno, what's the foul? Should the consolidation of the courts come about? How long would it be till the backlog of the courts now would be taken up? Bruno, I don't think anybody can really decide or tell you what the answer is to that. The judicial conference of the state, which is headed by the Albert Conway, Judge Albert Conway, the head of the court of appeals and has on it all the presiding judges of the appellate division, I've got their advanced second annual report in my hands right now. They don't even know how long it'll take to clear this up. A very interesting proposal was recently made, by the way, about handling this problem of congestion of negligence cases, especially, by the city court judges here in New York through Judge Gans, Julius Gans, who's the chairman of the legislative committee. He and Judge Harold Bear and Judge Harry Frank and Judge Burns, who's the presiding judge of the court

and Judge Frank Rivers have been working very hard and diligently on the problems involved here, especially in their own court. And you know that about a year or so ago, they made a proposed, we passed, all of us, a constitutional amendment, allowing the appellate division, which is the presiding court, in the specific areas without, throughout the state, to assign lower court judges to higher courts, where they're needed in order to help out in the congestion of the courts. Now, the city court judges come up with the proposal to take the city court judges and temporarily assign them all on the Supreme Court to help take care of that, then take municipal court judges, who are now available, and put them in the city court to do that job, and then to amend the present law, the municipal court code, and permit the mayor to appoint temporary 30-day or 60-day municipal court judges, those are the lowest court, for a period of, as I say, 30 or 60 or 90 days, to handle a municipal court problems. Now, the mayor is able to do that when a present municipal court justice is physically or mentally disabled.

He does it in domestic relations court too, and I think in the magistrate's court as well, appoint what they call 30-day judges. They would extend this power where it's only, where it now is only for physical and mental disability, to where a judge is assigned to a higher court, and therefore, they say, you'd be in the position of being able to use all these present experienced judges in the higher courts and get temporary judges in this municipal court for a period of time, as much as needed, they would have to, all of them would have to be temporary, just maybe 9 or 10, and you might have a quick solution to some of these problems. Now, is this recommendation, will that be included in this report to the mayor? No, the one I just made now was something which came across my desk and picked up my way over to our program. It's one which comes from the city court committee to the Tweed Commission and to the mayor, and there's been no evaluation by either one of those parties of this proposal. Question from Penny Fox. Mr. Lowell, how does inadequacy and inefficiency within our city's courts compare with those of other major cities?

I think that we do even better in New York than most cities do. Comparably, certainly we do, because there is no city in this country, and I presume that American courts are much more efficient than most countries, though I have my doubts about the English courts. I think they're probably more efficient. They're less emotional. In any event, the problem here is with 8 million people to be serviced, and for that matter, with all the people in the surrounding areas of Suffolk and Nashor and Westchester and Rockland who bring their actions in New York if they do business here, so that we're really servicing more than 8 million people. New Jersey, as well, we're servicing 15 million people in the metropolitan area. As under those circumstances, when you realize that we have less than 300 judges in the city of New York, I think that we're doing pretty well to serve us all those people. Question from Larry Lipsitz. If I can get back to the question of electing judges, do you think the average citizen knows who he's voting for? Well, I think the average citizen knows who he's voting for. I presume he is, Larry.

I would hesitate to say that the average citizen only knows who he's voting for when he votes for president because he's seen his face so many times on television. I have an intrinsic and deep-hearted faith in democracy and I believe that the people choose rightly or wrongly. They have the right to choose. And I think that under those circumstances, they know as readily who their Supreme Court judges are, as they do who are their Assemblyman or their Congressman or whatever it might be. And I think that for that reason, you can't decry or oppose the election of judges without an effect taking the position that you have some doubts about the whole elective process which makes America a very great democracy. Now, finally, we just got a minute or so left. Will the Court reform and court reorganization come as a result of all this study of the problem? Well, that's a very, very good question. Mr. Sleeper, because it's something which is the reason why the mayor made this 36-member committee of his so prominent a committee and so extensive in so many areas. It's not just lawyers.

We've had lawyers study this problem continually. On a mayor's committee are the leaders of our community in many areas. And we hope that with the aid of the, with, of course, the aid of the bar associations and the aid of the top appellate judges like Judge Peck and Judge Conway and the Tweed Commission's effective work personnel and this mayor's committee that we can persuade the state legislature, again, by the way, with the aid of the governor, that it's time that a job was done for the people of New York in this most important area of American democracy. Remember, you have three parts to our government, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. And the judicial is as important, if not more so, as any of the others. I'm sorry, Mr. Lowe, but our time is just about up. I think we have time for just one little shorty. Do you think Mayor Wagner will be around as mayor again? You mean to see this stuff go into effect? Well, whether he's going on to the Senate next time. Well, whether he's here or not, he'll be working for court reform, Marvin. Well, that's a good way to get out of it. I'm sorry, but our time is just about up now. You've certainly given us a pretty good idea of the kind of

facelift needed for the court system in our town. Thanks for taking time out from your heavy schedule to explain it. You've been listening to a campus press conference with Mr. Stanley H. Lowe, assistant to the mayor, and one of his closest advisors is our guest. In interviewing him, we're campus press conference reporters, Penny Foxx of the Hunter College Arrow, Jim Fowler, the Fordham Ram, Larry Lipsitz of the NYU Squared Journal, and Bruno Wassathal of the CCNY Observation Post. Many thanks for tuning in and a very pleasant week to you all. You've been listening to campus press conference in which college editors question prominent personalities in the news. Join us next Sunday evening at 9. We invite your comments on this program. WNYC New York 7 is our address. Campus press conference featuring Marvin Sleeper, award-winning reporter for the New York Journal American as moderator, is a transcribed public affairs feature of your city station.