In its long and vaunted history, the New Jersey Supreme Court has not only been at the vanguard of the law, with many of its precedent-setting decisions cited routinely in law school case books, but the court has, over many decades, been the principal protector of fundamental constitutional rights of this state’s citizens, interpreting the New Jersey Constitution to confer greater fundamental personal protections than exist under analogous provisions of the federal constitution. Our court has never been more important to this state’s citizens than in this past decade, one marked by a steady erosion of individual rights, with each passing decision of the United States Supreme Court.
If the criminal law decisions of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s past two terms are a harbinger of things to come, the court will soon mirror the United States Supreme Court, in that there is a clear institutional trend toward relatively narrow interpretations of individual rights. This past term the court decided a smaller number of criminal cases than in the past, and the number of cases reversed seems to be steadily shrinking. If the trend continues, New Jersey citizens may no longer be able to look to their state’s high court as the last protector of fundamental individual liberties.
