State Courts Will Attempt to Follow the Law

State Judge Assures Family Courts Will Be Open to All
The New York Times by William Glaberson  -  November 18, 2011

New York State’s chief judge said Friday that he was taking steps to assure that the state’s family courts are open to the public, after a report was published showing wide disregard for the open-courts policy in the city’s family courts.  The chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, reaffirmed the importance of a rule adopted in 1997 by the court system that officially opened the family courts to the public after decades when cases involving families and children had been largely conducted in secret.  “The transparency and integrity of the court process is vital to ensuring public trust and confidence,’’ Judge Lippman wrote in a memorandum to state’s family court judges. He said he had directed top state court administrators “to make sure that both the letter and the spirit of our long-standing rule is complied with now and in the future.”  In the letter, Judge Lippman, wrote that he was acting in response to a New York Times article on Friday that described court officials and officers across the city barring entry to courtrooms and declaring that court policy did not permit free access to proceedings. The Times article also said courtrooms were locked and that public attendance was discouraged with signs saying “do not enter” and, in the Bronx courthouse, “only persons having official business will be admitted.”  The Times’ report focused only on family courts in the city. But a court monitoring group, the Fund for Modern Courts, also found that many family court proceedings were closed in Suffolk County on Long Island and in upstate Washington County.  Judge Lippman, who was the chief administrator of the courts when the open-courts rule was adopted 14 years ago, wrote Friday that he was disturbed by The Times’s report and said that, “our rule, if anything, is being honored in the breach.”  In adopting the rule opening the state’s family courts, court officials presented it as part of an effort to reform courts that have long been described as starved of resources by the state and overwhelmed with cases that often stem from families in the grip of poverty.  In his letter to the family court judges, Judge Lippman returned to that theme. “We can never achieve the recognition and the resources that the Family Court so greatly needs, and deserves,’’ he wrote, “without the public being able to see the critical work that the Court does each and every day.”

CLICK HERE TO SEE BACKGROUND STORY, "New York Family Courts Say Keep Out, Despite Order."