Anyone who has been through law school recalls taking that grueling Constitutional Law class as a 1L. I cannot forget the trials and tribulations of my law school days, including the countless hours I spent absorbing the U.S. Constitution and the concomitant case law. After all, our entire federal and state legal systems are based on the bedrock of the U.S. Constitution, so how could any attorney truly be a champion of justice without fully understanding this sacred document?

While most attorneys are well versed in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and its counterparts in our state’s Constitution, including an individual’s rights to Due Process and the effective assistance of counsel, it seems that many of our leaders in Albany over the past two decades are not. The result is that the New York state legal system is in crisis, and the ultimate victims are children, indigent individuals, and indigent families.