Attorneys for the Empire State’s executive branch recently issued a wide-ranging introductory brief to the Court of Appeals, arguing for the reinstatement of its ethics watchdog’s statutory authority that was removed by two lower courts this year.

An ethics investigation of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose attorneys from Holwell Shuster & Goldberg LLP moved to sideline the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, hangs in the balance.