United At Last: The Judicial Article and the Struggle to Reform Kentucky's Courts

Kurt X. Metzmeier, University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law

Abstract

United at Last gives a general history of Kentucky’s courts from the commonwealth’s foundation in 1792, then describes, in more detail, the movement by a coalition of lawyers, judges and citizens to draft and pass the 1975 constitutional amendment that radically overhauled the state court system by simplifying the trial court system, adding a new intermediate appellate court, and unifying the court system into an independent and fully responsible third branch of government. The effort to implement the new reforms is then discussed, followed by a survey of the measures the unified court undertook over the following decades to fulfill the promise of reform. Additional chapters outline the major legal decisions of the Supreme Court over the last thirty years and provide brief biographies of all justices and judges of the new Supreme Court and reconstituted Court of Appeals since 1975. <em>Can be ordered at http://courts.ky.gov/aoc/education/UnitedAtLast.htm .</em> be