New York Family Courts Say Keep Out, Despite Order

Article here. Excerpt:

'New York State’s Family Courts were ordered to be opened to the public with much fanfare in 1997, supposedly allowing anyone to witness the cases of domestic violence, foster care and child neglect that inch through by the hundreds of thousands every year. But now, 14 years later, the Family Courts remain essentially, almost defiantly, closed to the general public.

Recent visits to the courts across New York City revealed officials and security officers routinely disregarding the open-courts rule in ways both large and small, direct and implied, insistent and even hostile.

Some courtrooms were locked, and many were marked with “stop” and “do not enter” signs. Court officers stationed at courtroom doors repeatedly barred a visitor, sometimes with sarcasm or ridicule, frequently demanding to know who he was and what he was doing. Armed court officers at times appeared so rattled by a visitor’s efforts to enter courtrooms that, in several instances, a group of them nervously confronted the visitor, their holsters in easy reach.
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American legal principles have long favored open courts as a check on government, and New York law has specifically said for more than a century that “the sittings of every court within the state shall be public.”

But by 1997, the Family Courts had been closed for decades, with rare exceptions. Critics said the chaos of the courts was amplified by their secrecy — a veil that had grown over the years with the support of many of the courts’ judges, lawyers and social-agency representatives. Closed courtrooms, critics argued, kept hidden the courts’ struggles, as well as the sometimes controversial ways they dealt with those who ended up in the resource-starved system plagued by delays.

Citing a need for accountability, the officials who issued the open-courts rule presented it as the centerpiece of an effort to reform Family Courts that were perennially in crisis. The rule was announced by Judith S. Kaye, the state’s chief judge at the time, and the chief administrative judge, Jonathan Lippman, now the chief judge. It stated bluntly, “The Family Court is open to the public,” and assured access to all courtrooms, lobbies and waiting areas. The only exceptions were to be after “case-by-case” decisions by judges after the presentation of “supporting evidence,” like a “compelling” privacy concern.'