The core mission of our judiciary is to deliver fair and timely justice to each and every person who enters our courts. But delivering justice is a necessarily interdependent endeavor. In order to function at its best, our justice system requires the cooperation and support of all key stakeholders, with a central role played by the bar. By working together as partners in justice, the courts and the bar can identify problems, develop solutions, improve and innovate, all in the interest of better serving our ultimate constituents—the people of New York. The court system and the bar have long shared this important goal and our collaboration has continuously produced outstanding results. As Chief Administrative Judge, it has been my true pleasure and privilege to work with the bar and I could think of no better opportunity than Bar Week to highlight some of our past and ongoing joint efforts to improve our system of justice.
First and foremost, the bar has continually and vocally supported the judiciary’s budget—the critical foundation that allows our courts to effectively and efficiently deliver justice. After years of no-growth budgets that left the courts short-staffed and necessitated a 4:30 p.m. courtroom closing time, the bar was quick to vocalize its concerns that service to the public was suffering. We in the court system took those concerns very seriously and did all that we could to address them—exploring every means of cost-efficiency in the new fiscal reality and submitting budgets that would allow us to mitigate the impact of the cutbacks. We are extremely grateful for the bar’s strong support of our budget, and especially for their recognition of just how essential last year’s 2.5 percent increase was to the effective operation of the entire court system. The passage of our last budget allowed us to take our first steps on the road to recovery, and with the ongoing support of the bar and all of our justice partners, we look forward to continuing down that path in the year ahead.
