The New York Court of Appeals: Analyzing the Status of Workers’ Rights in New York

By Christina French
Christina French, a third year student at Albany Law School, is the Editor-in-Chief of Albany Law School's Journal of Science and Technology. She works at New York State United Teacher as a Law Clerk for the Office of General Counsel.
This paper was prepared for the Judicial Process Seminar, Fall 2011 semester. It is Ms. French's 2d publication for the Center. (See Holmes and Cardozo: Early Contributions to the Progression of the Law, Nov. 28, 2011.)

This paper will provide a brief summary of several judicial opinions issued by the New York State Court of Appeals regarding employee benefits awarded for accidental on the job injury. The intention of the exercise is to provide the practicing attorney and other legal scholars with some insight into the status of workers’ rights as represented in the decisions of the New York Court of Appeals.

Two pieces, written by Holmes and Cardozo, contribute to the study of the judicial process by articulating the theory of legal realism and its approach to understanding what it is that judges do when they make decisions, and how that contributes to the progression of law. Before delving into the decisions, it is important to explore the theory of legal realism and how it can be applied to the study of the law of the courts.

Justice Holmes has written about the way in which judges begin with a decision first, and only after that decision is made, do they come up with reasons to explain them. Similarly, Justice Cardozo’s explanation of the judicial process begins with the law, but ends in the same place where Holmes begins, and that is with judges deciding difficult cases on the basis of considerations that reach well beyond the black letter of the law.

Ultimately, the two justices offer early forms of judicial realism that intended to avoid a formulaic and logical approach to decision making. Holmes and Cardozo add to our more modern conversation of legal realism by offering theories that advocate for a judicial process where the law is necessarily (and properly) shaped by changing notions of justice and fairness.

There are many avenues of workers’ rights issues that could be reviewed in order to provide the most comprehensive overview of how the topic is treated by the New York Court of Appeals. This paper will focus on those worker’s rights issues as related to awarding worker benefits for on the job injuries. The research was further limited to three years to ensure that the same composition of judges decided all of the cases.*
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* Citations to references in this introduction are available in the paper.
To read the entire paper, open HERE.

The NYCOA Bunch: An Analysis of Divided Criminal Cases at the New York State Court of Appeals

By Alexander Hyde
Alex Hyde, a 2011 summa cum laude graduate of Albany Law School, is currently employed in the General Counsel’s office for a group of insurance companies, headquartered in Glenmont, N.Y.  In his paper and slides, which were prepared for the Fall 2010 Judicial Process Seminar, Alex tracked and analyzed voting trends at the New York Court of Appeals in divided criminal cases between 2007 and 2010.


Observing the actual function of courts has been the work of many legal realists. It is an important task for many reasons.  First, courts make law and determine rights.  Demystification of the judicial process helps to decipher how justice is meted out; it can also prepare a practitioner.  Second, many realists seek to improve the way courts function. The first step in that process is to acknowledge the current role of the judiciary and isolate areas of weakness.  Finally and most importantly, for many realists the determination of what courts actually do is important simply to expose the inaccuracies of alternative pronouncements of the judicial process.  If ignorance tolerates injustice, disingenuousness accelerates and exacerbates it.  A frank discussion of reality, the argument goes, is the necessary approach to a judicial system which, admittedly, is impossible to perfect.

For my foray into the realist’s world, I chose to observe the New York State Court of Appeals.  The Court’s recent change of leadership piqued my interest. Specifically, I sought to determine the significance of the replacement of former Chief Judge Judith Kaye with the current Chief Judge, Jonathan Lippman.  Other than their swap, the court’s composition has remained unchanged since 2006.  Therefore, the two chiefs were each paired with the same six confederates for roughly the same period of time as of the writing of this paper.

To glean the significance of this judicial switcheroo, I chose to analyze divided criminal cases at the Court for the final two years of Chief Judge Kaye’s tenure, and for the first two years of Chief Judge Lippman’s tenure.  I focused on whether cases were decided “pro-defendant” or “pro-prosecution”.  I made the same determination for each judge’s written opinions and dissenting votes.  Based upon that compilation of data, I attempted to identify any discernible trends, and the results of that effort are reported below.*

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* Citations to references in this introduction are available in the paper.

To read the entire paper, open HERE.
To view the complete slide presentation, open HERE.
(It is then best to download the presentation and view it from there.)