Research
Research on judicial decisions and court transparency, including the studies behind our judicial profile metrics.
- publications
- 15
- years, 2023 to 2026
- 4
- metrics researched
- 7
- report partners
- 4
2026
- OCTOBER New York’s Highest Court, Decoded A plain-language record of how the Court of Appeals and each of its judges ruled on more than 1,700 decisions since 2013, sorted by issue.
- MARCH The State of NY Courts: 2025 in Review Statewide totals for trial court metrics, 2025 versus 2024.
- JANUARY Judicial Professional Background and Pretrial Detention Outcomes Peer-reviewed study: NYC judges who were prosecutors or police detained more people and set cash bail 32% higher.
- JANUARY Response to Executive Order 6 The mayor’s Executive Order 6 adopts two of our reforms, transparency and professional diversity, and leaves several others out.
2025
- DECEMBER Building a 21st Century Judiciary: A Reform Agenda for New York City The NYC mayor appoints about 180 NYC judges through an opaque process. We propose a reform agenda for that process.
- OCTOBER Backdoor to the Bench A cap on Supreme Court seats leads courts to promote hundreds of judges to acting justices through an opaque process.
- MARCH The State of Criminal Court Transparency in 2024 Only 130 New York judges published a criminal court decision in 2024, and 32 counties published none.
- FEBRUARY Judges’ Unpublished Decisions Debunk Discovery Myths Nearly 300 unpublished NYC rulings show dismissals came from prosecutors failing to share evidence, not technicalities.
- JANUARY Setting Bail to Fail Judges routinely set bail at amounts that frustrate the bail reform law’s goal of reducing wealth-based detention.
2024
- SEPTEMBER Harnessing AI To Enhance Judicial Transparency We use large language models (LLMs) to turn appellate decisions into data. Tested on 1,035 decisions, it was 99% accurate.
- SEPTEMBER Unprotected Judges failed to protect constitutional rights against police overreach, sometimes making the same legal errors across multiple cases.
- APRIL Reverse & Reassign We identified rare cases where judges’ conduct raised concerns serious enough to require reassignment to a different judge.
- MARCH Excessive Sentencers Appellate courts cut nearly 3,000 years from excessive sentences, with 12 judges accounting for more than 1,200 years of those reductions.