N.J. Constitutional Convention: Vol. 4, Page 288


STATE OF NEW JERSEY CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1947
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
Tuesday, July 8, 1947 (Morning session)

MR. VAN RIPER: I would assume, on the theories which I have talked about - and I understand that nobody is going to adopt it because I talk about it at all - what I had in mind was that the appeals from the Orphans' Court would probably go in the Equity Division.

MR. WINNE: Well, who is your Orphans' Court now? Is it a general trial court? Do they do criminal and Orphans' Court matters, too?

MR. VAN RIPER: Well, of course, they do now. You might have to separate them at the county court level.

MR. WINNE: That's a county court.

MR. VAN RIPER: That's right. I would think, if you are going to have an Equity Division and a Law Division, that Orphans' Court matters as we now have them certainly ought to be heard in the county, by a county judge. Under those circumstances it probably ought to be heard by a judge in the Law Division.

MR. McGRATH: Mr. Van Riper, let us take the judges of Common Pleas in Essex County - we want to call them Superior Court judges - would they still be sitting doing the same work?

MR. VAN RIPER: I imagine they would, but I think the administrative judge of that court, whoever he might be, would have an opportunity to assign them, or to assign cases. He would assign either the judge or the cases.

MR. McGRATH: Haven't we got that right today? Hasn't the Supreme Court the right to assign me to Cape May or vice versa?

MR. VAN RIPER: I am not just sure that it has. You have an authority on that sitting right here on this Committee. It doesn't work out that way. I don't believe you could under the present system. What I have in mind, Judge, is this. For instance, we have four Common Pleas judges in Essex County. We have four now, we had four when I was there. Three of us were trying criminal cases, and three criminal calendars go to pieces. You know how easy it is for calendars to go to pieces, and the three of us had nothing to do. And yet you have 25 or 30 cases on the ready calendar upstairs in the Circuit Court, and none of us can try them.

MR. McGRATH: Are you supplying the Supreme Court Justices with that same judicial power?

MR. VAN RIPER: Well, you know that works out as a practical thing. The Supreme Court Justice is the boss, so to speak, of the judicial machinery of his circuit, but in operation it just doesn't work out that way. They are not there working the calendar every day.

MR. McGRATH: What guarantee have we that it wouldn't work out that way if we call it the Supreme Court?

MR. VAN RIPER: You only have the guarantee that the man who would be the administrative judge at the head of that court


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