In the quiet of the Thanksgiving week, the New York Court of Appeals delivered a blockbuster batch of decisions that herald a new day for constitutional claims presented by criminal defendants in New York. The 12 decisions released on Nov. 21 are the first significant group of rulings in criminal cases from the newly constituted Court of Appeals and signal a dramatic realignment of the court’s seven judges.

The dozen cases from the Tuesday before Thanksgiving were headlined by six that presented Second Amendment challenges to gun-possession convictions in the aftermath of last year’s Supreme Court decision invalidating portions of New York’s gun-licensing regime. Other constitutional issues raised in these cases and in the remaining six involved police stops of bicyclists, police searches of vehicles and apartments, police handcuffing, prosecutorial use of prior convictions and the actions of defense counsel.