Research

Scope and Content Note

This series documents the activities and determinations of a special judicial commission appointed in 1966 to reapportion state legislative districts. Though the commission was active through the late 1960s, the records appear to document the delineation of assembly and senate districts for the 1966 election. Location of the commission's later files is not known.

Records consist of the commission's meeting minutes and published final report (including an exhibit volume of legislative district maps); other rolled and flat maps; incoming correspondence; published materials on apportionment issues; and the record and briefs on appeal in the case "In Matter of Jerome T. Orans" (15 NY 2d 339 [1965]). In that case the Court of Appeals determined which constitutional provisions on legislative apportionment remained intact, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's "one-man-one vote" decision of 1964 ("WMCA v. Lomenzo", 377 US 633). Many duplicate copies of the published final report and the record and briefs are present.

Of special interest are the large-scale maps which show exact boundaries of legislative districts of urbanized areas in New York City; Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties; Buffalo; Rochester; Syracuse; Albany; and Binghamton.