The New York Times has a three part series of articles–the result of “a yearlong investigation. . . of the live and history of New York State’s town and village courts.” These courts, helmed by men and women who are, for the most part, not lawyers, decide real cases in which jail time, eviction, or protection from domestic abuse hang in the balance.
These are New York’s town and village courts, or justice courts, as the 1,250 of them are widely known. In the public imagination, they are quaint holdovers from a bygone era, handling nothing weightier than traffic tickets and small claims. They get a roll of the eyes from lawyers who amuse one another with tales of incompetent small-town justices.A woman in Malone, N.Y., was not amused. A mother of four, she went to court in that North Country village seeking an order of protection against her husband, who the police said had choked her, kicked her in the stomach and threatened to kill her. The justice, Donald R. Roberts, a former state trooper with a high school diploma, not only refused, according to state officials, but later told the court clerk, “Every woman needs a good pounding every now and then.”
I haven’t finished reading them yet, but this series seems well worth exploring. Looks like you may need to register, if you haven’t done so already, but the pieces are all free and available.
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