A special committee, tasked with making recommendations about the New York state system of town and village courts released their findings today.

The system of town and village courts, according to the NYT, “handle traffic violations, but they also have jurisdiction over criminal matters. They hear more than two million cases a year and collect more than $210 million in fines and fees.” The committee, a radical bunch, recommended "setting minimum standards for judges’ education and training" (The way it is now judges are not required to have a JD or even a HS diploma.). But they stopped short of the revolutionary recommendation that judges be required to actually have some form of legal training.

This, after finding that the courts operated so poorly that in some cases: "Justices hand down sentences with seeming disregard for the law," and in one case finding a judge "who threatened a litigant for not adhering to a court order, writing to him on court stationery, ‘Remember, I know where you live.’"