Proposed Law Could Eliminate the Cap on Number of Judges in New York

Judges in New York City are overwhelmed with crushing caseloads. In the Bronx, for example, there are 2,358 pending cases for every supreme court justice. (In New York, “supreme court justice” refers not to judges on the state’s highest court, but to those sitting in the trial court of general jurisdiction and the four intermediate appellate courts. There are eight other trial courts: court of claims, surrogates, family, New York City civil — which includes housing court and small claims court — criminal, district, county, and town and village courts.)

By comparison, outside of New York City, the number of cases per justice ranges from 135 per judge in the 4th Judicial District, which covers central and western New York State, to 436 cases per judge in the 10th Judicial District, which covers Long Island.

The crushing caseloads in New York City translate to delays in justice for litigants, including delays in obtaining divorces in Matrimonial Parts, child support orders in family court, trials in criminal court while being incarcerated at Rikers Island, and decisions on motions and judgments in all courts. And, because supreme court justices serve in both trial courts and the intermediate appellate courts in New York state, the wait for an argument date in some appellate courts can be almost three years.

New York City supreme courts’ overwhelming caseloads are a result of Article 6 of the New York State Constitution, which sets the number of elected supreme court justices for each judicial district using a population-based ratio: one justice per 50,000 people, a number selected in 1963 — over 60 years ago. This leaves the legislature powerless to authorize additional seats to meet the courts’ needs triggered by the number of cases filed.

New York County supreme court, which serves Manhattan, has the highest filing rates in the state due to its unique location and reputation. Legal actions against New York City agencies are filed there as a matter of course, its Commercial Division attracts complex business litigation from around the world, and it is widely viewed as the court of choice for matrimonial cases statewide.

To address the lack of resources, the state Office of Court Administration has adopted makeshift measures that involve designating judges from other courts — such as civil court and criminal court — to sit on the supreme court on an “acting” basis. The number of acting supreme court justices at times outnumbers the number of justices elected to the supreme court.

Based on the 2020 census, the New York state population was 20.1 million, which translates into 403 justices. As of today, the number of supreme court justices authorized by the legislature is 364. But there are more than 700 judges assigned to the supreme court, a combination of elected and “acting” justices. While these transfers have reduced the number of cases per judge in places like the Bronx, the courts from which the acting justices came are now facing their own judicial shortages.

“Not only has this ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ approach depleted these other courts of judicial resources,” said a comprehensive report from the New York City Bar Association analyzing the need to repeal the constitutional cap on the number of justices in each judicial district, “it has created a de facto permanent and large class” of acting judges “sitting in a court other than the one to which they were either elected by the people or appointed by the relevant appointing authority.”

There is legislation pending in the New York State Legislature that would allow the public to vote on whether to amend the New York Constitution to remove the population-based limit on the number of supreme court justices, which has been in place since 1846. Such a change would help to increase access to justice and create opportunities to increase diversity on the bench.

The proposed constitutional amendment would allow the legislature to create additional supreme court seats where there is a need and where the budget will allow. The legislature in New York, and in every other state, has always created judicial seats; the constitutional amendment would not change this procedure.

The New York City Bar Association has proposed that, in addition to eliminating the cap, a weighted caseload system be created that uses objective metrics to analyze on a regular basis all cases for their complexity, taking into account the time it takes to resolve similar cases. The objective metrics would identify where judicial seats are needed in all New York courts. They would substitute for the population-based formula which has been used since the 1800s to predict caseloads. Predicting the number of cases should no longer be the practice when we have data that can give us actual numbers.

There is precedent for a weighted caseload system. The federal government and nearly 40 states use metrics to determine the number of judges needed. If other states can master this process, certainly New York can.

The court system is intended to serve the public. Independent analysis of the court system’s needs, and thus the people’s needs, will ensure that access to justice is real and not just a slogan. Voltaire once noted that the “perfect is the enemy of the good.” There is no “perfect” solution because ensuring access to justice is a moving target. But keeping the population-based system is not the answer.

Hon. Andrea Masley is a justice on the New York State Supreme Court. She sits on the New York County Court’s Commercial Division and was one of the authors of the City Bar report cited in the article.

Fran Hoffinger is a partner at The Hoffinger Firm, PLLC and the immediate past Chair of the City Bar Council on Judicial Administration which sponsored the report discussed herein.

Suggested Citation: Hon. Andrea Masley & Fran Hoffinger, Proposed Law Could Eliminate the Cap on Number of Judges in New York, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (May 18, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/eliminate-cap-number-judges-new-york