The Party Bosses Control Judicial Conventions That Pick Every Supreme Court Judges

Party Puppets Delegates Rubber Stamp The Political Bosses Pick for Supreme Court Judges

"A dozen delegates, in recent interviews, said they could not even remember the handful of candidates they had nominated for the State Supreme Court last year. They said the convention, as always, had been a carefully scripted event lasting less than an hour.  Whether the candidates were potentially outstanding judges, the delegates said they never knew. Before the convention, the party never makes an effort to inform them about which candidates are going to be nominated. In fact, the names are often secret." NY Times 2003

The Voters Have Not Idea How that the State's Higher Court, Supreme Court Judges Are Chosen at Judicial Conventions Controlled by Political Bosses

Picking Judges: Party Machines, Rubber Stamps - New York Times 2003

For decades in New York, the law has required that political parties nominate candidates to run for State Supreme Court at judicial conventions, not in primaries. The conventions are attended by delegates who are elected on the neighborhood level (Assembly District) and who are supposed to evaluate candidates before offering the best ones a spot on the November ballot. In theory, the conventions are intended to help achieve the civic goal of allowing citizens, through their votes, to decide the makeup of the state's highest trial court. But in practice, according to legal experts, prosecutors and even the delegates themselves, the conventions have long been highly cynical exercises, just another cog in the operations of political party machines. There is, for instance, often no debate about candidates, and party leaders wind up dictating nominations, frequently handing them to loyalists who have donated to the party or worked on campaigns. In fact, the nominating conventions have received so little attention that the City Board of Elections says it does not even keep an official record of those who serve as convention delegates -- the people legally charged with helping determine who gets on the bench.

Judicial Selection for Supreme Court Justices December 2006   * Who Really Picks New York's Judges? | Brennan Center for Justice 2015  * 'Smoke-Filled Rooms' Still Rule New York Judicial Elections - WNYC ...    Longtime Bronx DA Secures Nomination for Judge - Norwood News * Judicial Sausage Factory Continues, Almost Nobody Noticed

How the Machine Picks the Judges for the Supreme Court (the Trial Court) 

     There is nothing democratic about New York’s method of electing judges to its major trial court — confusingly referred to as the Supreme Court.
      Since 1921, New York’s election law has required parties to select their nominees by a convention composed of delegates elected by party members.   An individual running for delegate must submit a 500-signature petition collected within a specified time. The convention’s nominees appear automatically on the general-election ballot.
     In Brooklyn, the District Leaders fill the judicial delegate slots with their friends and family, the seats are unopposed and few even know about them, since delegate positions do not appear on the ballot.  A few days before a judicial convention, there is a closed door meeting of the district leaders, where they select the judge candidates for the Supreme Court seats.  The county committee members read the script their District Leaders gave them determining which judicial candidates will appear as the party’s nominees on the general election ballot.  These Judge candidates are generally unopposed in the general November election.  Since most delegates who pick Supreme Court Judges are handpicked by their county’s party officials and do not even appear on the ballot because they almost always run unopposed, this means that voters have no chance to pick who represents them at the conventions.

Who Really Picks New York’s Judges? Brennan Center  “Party conventions with their attendant 'smoke-filled rooms' and domination by party leaders have long been an accepted manner of selecting party candidates,” Supreme Court Justice Scalia said. The status quo may be accepted, Sample said, but it’s deeply flawed. “The system of smoke-filled rooms is producing candidates and ultimately judges who owe extraordinary debts of gratitude to very specific individuals,” he said.  There’s rarely an express quid pro quo, he said, but “if the answer is just, well, that’s just politics – that’s an extraordinary power.”  The Constitution does not prohibit legislatures from enacting stupid laws or unfair election laws.






Political Machine Bosses Elect Judges

Judicial Conventions N Korea Puppet Show

An Inside look at what goes on during a Judicial Convention that elected NYS Supreme Court Judges  

From the Daily News "I attended the Kings CountyDemocratic judicial nominating convention Tuesday.  It was orchestrated "Soviet-style." Short, sweet, lady- and gentleman-like, the script called for the eight candidates to be designated or re-designated without opposition, even for supposed "open" seats. Before adjournment, each judge candidate got up and gave a short thank-you speech. Every one of them expressed gratitude to the party district leaders for their support, and they also expressed effusive thanks to and praise of County Leader Vito Lopez. One 're-up,' John Leventhal of the Appellate Division, Second Department (after inquiring if the press was present) thanked now-imprisoned county leader Clarence Norman as well, and another called Lopez "the greatest county leader ever." After adjournment, I spoke with a number of delegates who voted "automatically" and didn't seem to know for whom they were voting. They didn't know, and were just told for whom to vote." - Daily News 2008

  

The Supreme Court (NY's Higher Court)
is a trial court and is not the highest court in the state. The highest court of the State of New York is the Court of Appeals. Second, although it is a trial court, the Supreme Court sits as a "single great tribunal of general state-wide jurisdiction, rather than an aggregation of separate courts sitting in the several counties or judicial districts of the state." There is a branch of the Supreme Court in each of New York's 62 counties. Under the New York State Constitution, the New York State Supreme Court has unlimited jurisdiction in both civil and criminal cases, with the exception of certain monetary claims against the State of New York itself. In practice, the Supreme Court hears civil actions involving claims above a certain monetary amount (for example, $25,000 in New York City) that puts the claim beyond the jurisdiction of lower courts.^[3] Civil actions about lesser sums are heard by courts of limited jurisdiction, such as the New York City Civil Court.