Arthur T. Vanderbilt

Arthur T. Vanderbilt
Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court
In office 1948–1957
Succeeded by	Joseph Weintraub

Arthur T. Vanderbilt (July 7, 1888 – June 16, 1957) was Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court from 1948 to 1957; the first Chief Justice under the revamped New Jersey court system established by the Constitution of 1947, in which the Supreme Court replaced the old Court of Errors and Appeals as the highest court. He also was an attorney, legal educator and proponent of court modernization.

Vanderbilt was born on July 7, 1888, in Newark, New Jersey, to Louis and Ellen H. (née Leach) Vanderbilt. He had one sibling, a younger brother named Leslie He attended Newark (now Barringer) High School where he was class president, editor of the newspaper, and a member of two fraternal groups, The Ramblers (later Omega Gamma Delta) and Lambda Tau. Following high school he took off a year to work on the railroad to earn money for college.

He attended Wesleyan University, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon, president of the student body, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. A sidelight of his Wesleyan career was the inauguration of President William A. Shanklin. Vanderbilt was one of the inauguration speakers, along with U. S. President William Howard Taft, and then startled Taft by showing up later as a waiter at the inaugural dinner. Vanderbilt then attended Columbia University School of Law.

Many of Vanderbilt's ideas for court reform had been incorporated into the new judicial article of the New Jersey Constitution. One of those innovations was the designation of the Chief Justice as the administrative head of all courts in the state, replacing the previous system of almost completely autonomous courts. As Chief Justice, he created the first state Administrative Office of the Courts in the nation.

An appreciation of the changes brought to the New Jersey judicial system can be gained from a comparison between the structure of the courts before the new constitution and after. There were over 20 different courts in the system (e.g.-superior court, supreme court, court of errors and appeals, chancery, oyer & terminer, orphan's court, county court, general sessions, quarter sessions, etc., etc., etc.) which were replaced by the New Jersey Supreme Court, the Superior Court (Law, Chancery and Appellate Divisions), County Court, County District Court and the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court. The County Courts were merged into the Superior Court, Law Division, as were the County District Courts, now known as the Special Civil Part of the Superior Court, and the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, now the Family Part of the Chancery Division. These were joined by the Tax Court. In addition, there are Municipal Courts which handled minor criminal and ordinance violations.

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