Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Civil Justice

Civil Justice

  • Civil Justice Reform Can Help Accomplish Progressive Goals

    Municipal Building Brooklyn (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    New York’s broken civil justice system is holding back progress.

    Civil justice reform is often unfairly maligned. In reality, most common-sense legal reform initiatives align with progressive goals and values that benefit all New Yorkers. 

    Civil justice reform targets the financial incentives that often drive excess lawsuits. A relative handful of people currently abuse the civil

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  • The Week That Was in New York Politics, June 15-19

    week in review bus readers

    photo: Stanley Kubrick via Museum of the City of New York


    Gotham Gazette's Week in Review, Friday June 19

    PHOTO OF THE WEEK: Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks at the groundbreaking for the Cornel Technion campus on Roosevelt Island, praising former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who announced a $100 million donation to the school; ...

  • How We Got Here: City Creates New Office of Civil Justice

    BdB Levine Gibson

    At Tuesday's bill signing (photo: @NYCHRA)


    "The Gideon versus Wainwright case paved the way for the right to legal counsel in criminal cases but, sadly, the right to counsel was not available in civil cases when the stakes were also very, very high for those involved. Civil cases affect some of the most important parts of a person's life, the ability to have and keep a home, to keep a family together, to escape from domestic violence, in fact, to be able to stay in this country. So on these areas there is a deep

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