Word: fuld
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When Dewey became Manhattan's district attorney, Fuld headed his indictments bureau and soon became a leading criminal-law reformer. Appalled at the prolix, mumbo-jumbo language of indictments, he boiled the lengthy forms into two or three precise sentences. Fuld's forms are still in use throughout the state. By weeding out other legal technicalities, such as overly narrow categories of larceny, which left loopholes for the guilty, Fuld earned high praise from at least one leading judge, who wrote to urge his elevation to New York's top court. Governor Dewey soon obliged...
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...