The Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) functions as the City's central administrative tribunal with the authority to conduct administrative hearings for all City agencies. As the City's only independent central tribunal, OATH hears diverse and complex proceedings involving both mayoral and non-mayoral agencies. OATH is an independent agency of government so that its judges can provide an unbiased assessment of the matters to be adjudicated.

Traditionally, administrative hearings were conducted by hearing officers who were employees of the same agency that brought the administrative proceeding. Modern administrative law is moving away from internal hearing officers and towards a central tribunal system like OATH, where the judges are fully independent of the agencies whose advocates appear before them and where the judge has the same relationship with the prosecution as with the defense. The central tribunal enhances confidence in the fairness and neutrality of the process. OATH, which was established in 1979, is the country's first municipal central tribunal. Chicago and Washington, D.C. have since established central tribunals, and twenty-six states have moved, at least partially, to centralized administrative adjudication.

The diversity of the issues adjudicated by OATH can be measured by the fact that during Fiscal Year 2007, OATH docketed 2,328 cases from more than 30 agencies involving 14 different case types and subject matters. OATH classifies the cases referred for adjudication into seven primary categories: personnel, vehicle forfeiture, license, regulatory, real estate/land use, contract and discrimination.

As part of its mission to improve administrative adjudication, all OATH decisions are available on the Internet to aid attorneys and others in researching administrative law issues. This website was developed in cooperation with the Center for New York City Law. The website offers both summaries and full text versions of all OATH decisions, both past and present, and is located at www.citylaw.org.

We at OATH are proud to offer this innovation to the New York City legal community. We encourage all who use it to contact us with comments and suggestions for improvements.