By Matthew Hohmann, J.D. Candidate, Harvard Law School
STUDENT VOICES: The views expressed below are those of the student author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Access to Justice Lab.
Starting in 1998, the Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals has delivered an annual “State of the Judiciary” address from Court of Appeals Hall in Albany. In a typical year, much like its analogous State of the Union cousin in Washington, the address highlights the accomplishments of the state courts over the previous year. Areas for growth receive a lighter touch.
Current officeholder Chief Judge Rowan Wilson’s approach is, in his words, “unorthodox.” This year, rather than merely sing the judiciary’s praises, he took the opportunity of the annual address to bring attention to one of the state’s most critical access to justice problems: the difficulties families face while navigating New York Family Court.
The New York Family Court experience addressed in Chief Judge Wilson’s speech is a useful study for understanding the broader challenges facing family court users throughout the United States. Despite judicial efforts to address families’ underlying social needs, the buck ultimately stops with the political branches to implement more lasting improvements.
Identifying the Challenges
Following a long history of judicial experimentation with administering justice for child-related matters, a 1961 amendment to the New York Constitution established the current system of specialized family courts. Although divorce proceedings remain within the purview of the Supreme Court (New York’s superior trial courts), Family Court is responsible for nearly all matters involving children and parents, including child abuse and neglect, adoption, child custody and visitation, domestic violence, guardianship, juvenile delinquency, paternity, assistance for persons in need of supervision, and child support.
The access to justice challenges within New York’s family court system will come as little surprise to those with even a cursory understanding of the family court landscape in the United States. Fundamentally, courts lack capacity to meet the litigant social needs that give rise to their legal problems.
In her 2022 piece “The Institutional Mismatch of State Civil Courts,” Columbia Law School Professor Colleen Shanahan and her co-authors outline an institutional mismatch that typifies state civil courts. While these courts are equipped to handle dispute resolution between parties—such as a parent contesting custody or a landlord seeking to evict a tenant—the dispute framing merely papers over litigants’ underlying social needs. Taking the example of housing court, disputes are “a foreseeable consequence of the absence of affordable and adequate housing, health care, childcare, and education, the absence of fair and equal wages, and the presence of mass incarceration in our society.”
Chief Judge Wilson comments on those same underlying social needs arising in New York Family Court cases. From his perspective, “The conditions that land families in legal trouble are often complex problems like mental illness, physical illness, violence, poor health and nutrition, inadequate medical care and housing instability.”
The personal experience of Josiah Gilbert, one of Chief Judge Wilson’s guest speakers, exemplifies how these conditions often arise in family court proceedings. His mother gave birth to him when she was 18 and dropped out of college because “affordable childcare was out of reach.” Poverty, along with his mother’s untreated mental health issues, resulted in intermittent homelessness. A New York City Administration for Children’s Services abuse and neglect case followed.
Chief Judge Wilson further observes that family courts are “not equipped to help families navigate” these problems during the lifecycle of a case. Data supports his assertion. A 2024 New York State Senate Report revealed persistent delays and burdensome caseloads, as well as difficulties for litigants in obtaining necessary resources to address their needs. Additionally, a 2022 New York State Bar Association report revealed evidence that child welfare outcomes varied by race and socioeconomic status, raising the possibility of systemic bias.
Sarai Mejia, another of Justice Wilson’s guests, offered remarks consistent with that latter possibility. After her son was diagnosed at the hospital with a broken femur, “[T]he entire atmosphere changed from assistance to accusation.” What followed was an agonizing four-month period away from her children while she worked with a public defender to get them back. Without adequate resources devoted to addressing litigants’ underlying social needs, such episodes of injustice likely will recur.
Judicial Responses
Without sufficient legislative and executive action, the challenge of producing just outcomes for litigants with underlying social needs is left to New York Family Court judges and staff. According to Chief Judge Wilson, although social problems “are not made by Family Court and cannot best be addressed by Family Court… at present, it falls on Family Court to adapt from treatment of symptoms to treatment of the underlying ills.”
Courts have taken a variety of approaches to dealing with the absence of sufficient resources to address litigants’ underlying social needs. As Shanahan and her co-authors observed in some 350 civil courtroom proceedings, while some judges intoned concerns of institutional design and role and ignored social needs, others attempted to connect litigants with resources, created new law or procedure to account for social needs, or constituted new institutions. For just one of several proactive examples, a jurisdiction created a domestic violence advocate position to connect victims with resources for addressing common survivor social needs.
Chief Judge Wilson appears inclined to the proactive approach. In his 2024 State of the Judiciary speech, he called on judges to “think of courts as problem solvers, not solely as adjudicators of which party is right,” and in doing so, craft a “careful and compassionate response” to litigants’ human problems. In the most recent address, he highlighted the efforts of two Rochester Family Court judges to build a library for children at the courthouse. This step, while miniscule when measured against the weight of children’s unmet needs in family court, is representative of His Honor’s reframing of the judicial role: step outside the “v.” of dispute resolution to tackle unmet needs.
Further progress has come from institutional innovation within the judiciary. Under Chief Judge Wilson’s leadership, non-judicial staffing has increased by 21%, a development that has helped reduce delays. Continuing judicial education offerings now include a variety of family law-related topics, such as trauma-informed decision making. And a Permanent Commission on Justice for Families now seeks best practices for promoting “equity, access, transparency, and understanding within the family justice system statewide.”
Lasting Change
The best solutions for addressing litigants’ social needs lie primarily with the legislative and executive branches. Despite the best efforts of individual judges and court staff to respond to litigants’ social challenges, as Chief Judge Wilson notes, “the courts are not, in many cases, the best governmental institution to help families move forward safely and healthily.”
An overview of institutional capacity supports that assertion. Unlike the other branches of government, courts do not have the power of the purse, the power to investigate proactively, the power to establish benefits programs, or the power to decree sweeping policy changes. Without these powers, judicial intervention can extend only so far.
Evidence also suggests that overreaching judicial intervention risks judges exceeding their own capacities. Particularly in light of racially varied outcomes, too much power in the hands of judges to craft individualized remedies, at the expense of equal treatment, risks undermining fairness by allowing biases to have an even greater impact. This possibility underscores the importance of a cautious, evidence-based approach to judicial innovation.
For Chief Judge Wilson, “If we had a magic wand we should use it to eliminate Family Court entirely by eliminating all the problems families have.” Absent fulfillment of that goal, His Honor’s call to action for judges and other governmental actors to address families’ social needs through New York Family Courts serves as a powerful roadmap for taking the next step.
If you’re interested in more on this topic, listen to our Proof Over Precedent podcast episode.