Word: fuld
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...this scandal, Stanley H. Fuld, Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, announced last April that all New York State defendants except homicide suspects must be tried within six months of their arrest; otherwise, said the judge, they may not be prosecuted at all. Moreover, any prisoners who do not get bail must be tried within 90 days or granted bail. In view of all the complications, a full year was allowed before the speedy-trial rule was to take effect...
Whose Orthodoxy? Fuld's judicial opinions have been especially significant in resolving "conflict of laws" between jurisdictions. In the 1963 case of Babcock v. Jackson, for example, the issue was whether a New York woman resident could recover damages from the New York driver of a car in which she had been injured in a Canadian accident. Though New York law permitted recovery, Canadian law did not. Under rules prevailing at the time, such damage suits were invariably governed by the law where the accident occurred. In a pioneering decision, Fuld permitted the woman to recover under New York...
...Fuld, in fact, has constantly enjoyed one of judging's greatest pleasures: seeing many of his dissents later become law. In 1951, for instance, the New York court upheld the banning of an Italian film, The Miracle, on the ground that it was "sacrilegious." In dissent, Fuld scoffingly asked the court majority: "What is orthodox, what sacrilegious? Whose orthodoxy, to whom sacrilegious?" Courts have since abandoned such censorship. Other Fuld dissents ultimately have been carried into law by the U.S. Supreme Court, on issues such as free speech, obscenity and literacy tests. Most recently, he led his court...
Rethinking Precedent. With his passion for privacy, Fuld rarely mentions publicly that he has two daughters (one married to a lawyer, the other to a doctor), that he commutes between his offices in Albany and Manhattan by nothing grander than a bus, that his favorite hobby is mountain climbing (he once nearly reached the top of the Matterhorn). The judge prefers to be known by his written decisions...
Perhaps the best example of Fuld's reasoning was a 1957 opinion in which he re-examined the legal tradition of stare decisis (precedent decides). If it is argued, he wrote, "that stare decisis compels us to perpetuate a rule-out of tune with the life around us, at variance with modern-day needs and with concepts of justice and fair dealing-a ready answer is at hand. The rule of stare decisis was intended not to effect a petrifying rigidity, but to assure the justice that flows from certainty and stability. If, instead, adherence to precedent offers...