ALBANY, NY- “Many judicial decisions across New York continue to remain unpublished, depriving voters and committees that reappoint judges the insight on how justice is administered and the Constitution is being interpreted,” wrote the Albany Times Union Capitol Bureau this week.
The Bureau noted how “two government watchdog groups, Scrutinize and Reinvent Albany” in a report “found that only 130 judges across New York had published at least one of their decisions in criminal cases last year.”
The Bureau added the watchdogs pointed in their report, “Despite push for reform, transparency remains the exception rather than the norm,” with “The New York court system… yet to publicly take a position on increasing transparency of decisions in the courts they oversee.”
The report stated, said the Capitol report, “New York’s criminal court judges have control over whether they publish their decisions,” as “only 394 criminal court decisions were published in 2024, an increase of just over 20 from those published the year prior.”
“The public expects to be able to find information online in 2025,” and with a lack of “decisive commitment to transparency, the courts risk further eroding the public’s faith in the justice system,” the report charged, according to the Times Union.
The Capitol Bureau describes how Rachael Fauss and Oded Oren, founders of Reinvent Albany and Scrutinize respectively, said sweeping “statutory changes in New York’s court rules and regulations over the past eight years make it important for lawmakers, advocates and the public to have more insight on how those initiatives have played out within the judicial system.”
The Bureau concluded the report stated, “Judges and courts must do better, not only for New Yorkers but for the legitimacy of the very institution they serve” and how now “more than ever, the judiciary must not only be open and fair—it must appear open and fair to maintain public trust.”
