Jury Trial Summary

The Queens Supreme Court is the 11th District Court of New York. I interned in the Civil Court division, which handles various cases of a non-criminal nature. I interned under, Justice Martin Ritholtz, who handles cases of both civil and a commercial nature. Within the Queens Supreme Court, there are only three judges who handle commercial cases, thus many of the cases that Judge Ritholtz saw were of a commercial nature. Most tended to be non-serious car accidents. These cases traditionally would come in droves and would be completed quickly as well. Most were decided via a Summary Jury Trial, which essentially serves as a precursor to a real trial. The Summary Jury Trial is meant to encourage settlement. The testimony is delivered before a …show more content…
Rosenbaum cites the concept of the “reasonable man” that is found within law as an example that displays the lack of morality in law, and the lack of context that goes into making a legal decision. The reasonable man complex essentially means, “we ask what would most people, in a particular community, do in a particular situation.” It makes sense from a legal perspective to judge each citizen, but does it make sense from a moral perspective is Rosenbaum’s chief question. Rosenbaum writes: “the reasonable man, through sheer moral blindness and undaunted commonness, may be representative of the community, is he our model citizen?” We now have this dichotomy between what is moral and what is legal. And while from a moral perspective Rosenbaum is right; the reasonable man is not the paradigm for how we should want to judge society, changing the law to resemble that of a superior moral citizen is problematic. It is cases like those that result in the Good Samaritan Law found in the final episode of Seinfeld. While Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer are certainly not the best people, they did not deserve to be arrested for their lack of action in preventing the robbery. Calling someone fat does not make their actions anymore legally reprehensible. Thus although, their actions and remarks were certainly amoral, there certainly needs to be a distinction between the moral and legal aspects of law. Examples such as these certainly came into play during the course of my internship. It often seemed as the Judge wanted to judge people based on the moral intricacies involved in the case. As a deeply religious and moral man, and sometimes Rabbi, he would often quote the Bible during conferences and look to it for guidance. He wanted to do what he felt was right. At the same