jurisdiction of the city court in common law cases to $5,000 — there ought to be included a provision that if the judgment of the city court is reversed by a mere majority of the Appellate Term, there should be the same right of appeal to the Appellate Division that we recommend there shall be from the Appellate Division to the Court of Appeals in the matter of reversal by divided court of the judgment of the Supreme Court. Coming now to the Court of Appeals, the immediate circumstance that confronted us was this accumulation of upwards of six hundred appeals, with the inevitably increasing accumulation and with the delay to suitors which resulted from it. There seemed to be but two ways to meet that. One was to appoint a second division or commission of appeals, which I think all lawyers have found objectionable in the past, and the other was to do nothing, just to let this accumulation go on, and we have thought we would have been recreant to our duty had we failed to submit some solution, and had merely turned our back upon the difficulty. The other alternative is the one we have recommended, namely that within three months after the new Constitution shall take effect, in the first place, that the permanent force of the Court of Appeals be increased from seven to ten. Under the present Constitution as you are aware the Court has the right to call upon the Governor to designate not more than four justices of the Supreme Court to sit temporarily in the Court of Appeals until the arrearages are cleared up and the arrearages have never been cleared up and they are constantly growing. The court has never availed to the full of the power conferred upon it by the existing Constitution. We have been unable to ascertain why, except that the judges have thought that they could do more business and could better dispose of their cases with ten judges than with eleven. As a matter of fact they have had three justices of the Supreme Court sitting by assignment in the Court of Appeals for several years. We have recommended that those three judges be made permanent judges of the court, their successors to be elected by the people and the permanent composition of the Court of Appeals in the future be ten judges, one of whom shall be chief judge. We then recommend that three months after the adoption of the Constitution, the Court of Appeals shall call in from the Supreme Court not less than four nor more than six judges of that court and shall resolve itself into two parts, distributing the temporarily assigned justices equally between the parts, so that in each part there shall be four of the permanent judges of the Court of Appeals and two or three of the assigned judges; that the chief judge shall distribute pending cases as nearly equally as may be between those two parts and that each of those parts of the court shall then procced to hear and determine the accumulation of cases and that when the number of cases so accumulated is reduced to two hundred, and not later than December 31, 1917, the judges of the Supreme Court shall return to their permanent places, the Court of Appeals shall resume its normal proportions as a single court, and proceed with its business. That time was fixed as the estimated outside limit that should be required to enable the court to dispose of the accumulations of business and keep abreast of its current work. In view of the experience under the present provisions of the Constitution, we fixed a time limit when the Supreme Court judges should return to their court, to the end that this arrangement should be what it is intended to be, temporary, and that it should not be a part of the permanent organization of the court. We did not do the same thing with respect to the Appellate Division in the First Department because there is no such arrearage of cases there. We then provided that the Court of Appeals shall annually make up a calendar of cases pending in it. It is now, as I said a moment ago, nearly a year and a half since the last calendar was made up in that court. We provide that they shall annually make up the calendar, and if on the first of January in any year there shall be 500 cases on the calendar of that court, the court shall call in Supreme Court judges, divide itself into two parts clear up the arrears, and when they get to 200 cases, not later than one year from the time of this expansion, the Supreme Court judges shall again return to their courts and the Court of Appeals resume its normal functions. By these methods we have sought to provide for the present exigency and to create machinery which would prevent any undue accumulation of cases in the future. One of the prime requirements in the administration of justice is that it shall be reasonably speedy, and that undue delays shall be avoided. In connection with the organization of courts our attention was directed to the Court of Claims, which, as this body knows, has been the football of politices. Boards of Claims, Courts of Claims, each succeeding party as it has come into power has legislated out the Board of Claims or the Court of Claims, as the case might be, and created a new tribumal of the same kind under a different name. It was very obvious to your committee that one of two things should be done; either the Court of Claims should be made a permanent part of the judicial organization of the State, embodied in the Constitution, given appropriate powers and removed from this sphere of political activity, or its jurisdiction should be devolved upon the Supreme Court, to be exercised like other jurisprudence. We have adopted a plan recommending that the Court of Claims be continued as a separate, distinct tribunal, for the reason that the Court of Claims is sui generis; it is really the successor of the legislative committee or the board of audit. Its function is solely to consider claims made against the State and to ascertain and determine what amounts the State should properly pay to claimants of that character which the Legislature is authorized to present through claims in that tribunal. The jurisdiction is exercised somewhat informally. The testimony is taken by a single judge who goes to the place where it is most convenient to get the facts; the cases are heard in an informal way and an award is made by a majority of the court. On the whole, we concluded that it were best to preserve that character of tribunal and to continue the court as at present constituted, authorizing the Legislature to make such changes or modifications in its jurisdiction as it should from time to time see fit, and to fix the salaries of the judges. Before I pass to tribunals of less importance, let me say, in passing, that one of the matters we were called upon to consider was the conduct of courts of impeachment. The strongest argument employed by advocates of judicial recall has lain in the cumbersome nature of trials by impeachment and it has seemed to us that one of the most important things we could do was to simplify, so far as was possible, the procedure in courts of impeachment so that that remedy, when invoked, should present no such obstacles as to justify the reproach that it was an inadequate, cumbersome, useless instrument for the attainment of justice in the removal of an unjust public official. We have recommended the provision that evidence in impeachment trials may be taken by a committee to be appointed by the Court of Impeachment but that the impeached official should have the right, if he desired, to be heard before the court. That would very greatly simplify the taking of evidence in the ordinary impeachment case. It would relieve the court of impeachment from a complete suspension of the ordinary functions of its members in legislative or judicial work while the mass of testimony is being taken that might just as well be taken by a committee as by the whole body, which should be reported to the whole body. We have recommended a number of provisions relating to county courts. The county court, as such, serves a most useful purpose in the ordinary administration of law. I confess that, as a practitioner in cities. I had not appreciated, until I sat upon this Committee and heard the testimony of practitioners through the State, the value of the county court as one of the vehicles for the administration of justice in the ordinary cases, especially in the administration of the criminal law, and, to a large extent, in the administration of the civil law. We were urged by a number of persons appearing before us to recommend an increase in the jurisdiction of the county courts and we have yielded to that to the extent of recommending an increase from $2,000 to $3,000. One of the subjects of complaint was that the exemption in counties having a population of less than 120,000 of the prohibition against the county judge practicing law - one of the results of that exemption had been a great deal of complaint that county judges were paid a very much smaller salary than they could afford to abandon their practice for and live upon, and that, in a great many instances, they were retained in lawsuits because of their official position. Whether they were influenced by that fact or not, it gave rise to a great deal of criticism. On the other hand, representatives of the different counties have stated to us that, as a rule, the counties would be unwilling to pay, perhaps would be unable to pay, large enough salaries to enable them to secure competent men, such as most county judges are, if they were forbidden to practice law. After a great deal of consideration we finally have recommended dropping the limit of population from 120,000 to 75,000 and prohibiting the county judges in counties having a population of 75,000 or upwards from praeticing law. In order that this might not lead to the results which it was predicted in some quarters would follow, we have also provided that, in the counties affected by that change, the offices of county judge and surrogate might be combined, and we have exempted county judges under those conditions from the prohibition which we have put in another place in the article forbidding the Legislature to increase or decrease the salary of any judicial officer during the term for which he was elected. Now we have also recommended a modification in the jurisdiction of the county court by giving - extending its jurisdiction over nonresidents having an office for the transaction of business in the county where the cause of action arose within the county. In that same connection I spoke of surrogates. One of the questions that confronted us was how to deal with the jurisdiction of the surrogates' courts. Two years ago, as you are aware, there was a revision of the law affecting surrogates and surrogates' courts, enacted by the Legislature, and it very greatly extended the jurisdiction of those tribunals, and, among other things, it empowered the surrogates, when issues of fact arose triable by jury either to send the issue to the Supreme Court for a trial or to themselves impanel a jury in their own court and try the case. had very great doubt as to the wisdom of that provision, and though there was much conflicting opinion pro and con, we finally determined to recommend that the surrogate's courts shall continue to have the jurisdiction they at present enjoy, subject to the right We of the Legislature to modify or change it from time to time. If the experiment which has been entered upon prove satisfactory to the people, the Legislature of course will not be apt to interfere in it. If the result shall not be satisfactory, it is open to the Legislature to make the change. In running down through these courts, I have neglected to speak of one of the most important questions, of perhaps greater importance than any of those I have touched upon, and that is the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals. It was strongly urged upon us from some quarters that the way to the Court of Appeals should be made easier and broader and its jurisdiction should be open to include almost anybody who chose to appeal from the judgment of the Appellate Division to it, and that the court, when it had a case on appeal, should have jurisdiction over the law and fact. We revert to the determination of the Convention of 1894, which drew the sharp line of demarcation between functions of the Court of Appeals and those of the Appellate Division. It recommends that every suitor has a right to one plenary review of law and fact, and that that review should be had in the Appellate Division. We consider the Court of Appeals as a court of law created for the purpose primarily of settling the law of the State. We restrict its jurisdiction to the review of questions of law, save in two cases only: First, on appeals from convictions for murder, capital cases, where the appeal goes directly from the trial court to the Court of Appeals; and, second, to that peculiar class of cases which arise under the recent legislation, which enables the Appellate Division, in reviewing an appeal from the Supreme Court, to itself make new findings and enter a judgment different from the judgment appealed from. In that case the Appellate Division acts as the alter ego of the trial court, and we have recognized the right of the unsuccessful suitor there to plenary review in the Court of Appeals. With that exception, we affirm the principle that the Court of Appeals is a court of law and not a court for the review of questions of fact. There was in the Constitution of 1894, a provision which, when it was adopted, it was considered would withdraw from the Court of Appeals the consideration of a large number of cases which should not vex it, to the effect that it should not be open to the Court of Appeals to consider whether or not on the admitted facts of the case the plaintiff was entitled to recover; that is, whether there was any evidence whatever to support the judgment. That was a question of law. It had always been a question of law. The Constitution of 1894 declared it should not thereafter be treated as a question of law and they thought that thereby they would relieve the Court of Appeals of a great deal of unnecessary embarrassment. As a matter of fact, |