Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Speaker's chum annointed New York's top judge
The Village Voice has a scathing article about the appointment of Jonathan Lippman as head of New York's high court. Lipmann has negligible experience as a jurist. According to The Voice, Lippman's written a mere 16 signed judicial opinions, has been a judge for only a few years and has never practiced as a private attorney. He is the first person in over a century to preside over New York's highest court without ever having previously been an associate judge. He's now in charge not only of New York's top court but of the state's entire judicial system. But Lippman did have one thing going for him: a lifelong friendship with the state's powerful Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a man around whom a whiff of backroom dealing and sleaze is never far. The article does nothing to dissipate that whiff.
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9 comments:
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William Harris
Is having no or minimumal judicial experience necessarily a bad thing?
He has virtually no experience as a judge and zero experience as a practicing lawyer. My personal opinion is that if someone is going to be nominated as the chief judge of the state's top court, then yes I would prefer he, you know, actually have a clue about the law.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/us/17bar.html?scp=3&sq=supreme%20court&st=cse
As the NYT has recently pointed out in one of their articles, being a previous judge or a lawyer for that matter is no guarantee that their descisions will be based on legal precedent.
Federal judges were quite frequently from all walks of life from governors, senators, executive officials, etc. It really wasn't until the Right's outrage over Brown V Board that there was a concentrated push for them to have "judicial experience."
Futhermore when one gets appointed that high up as a judge, they're looking at procedure & whether said policy is written well enough to pass the common sense or legal muster. Not to mention, someone w/ judicial experience may have less of an ability than someone who's dealt w/ the meat & potatoes of persuading support to his viewpoint from his colleagues. Think about it. Is having almost a generation of 5-4 descisions of the important social issues of the day from judges w/ judicial experience that much stronger than those who are 7-2 or 9-0 descisions of those same issues but w/ judges w/ some to no experience?
Lord knows, the Dred Scott desicison was of sound legal reasoning but had terrible, terrible ramifications for the country. Yet on the flipside, the Nuremburg trials (had they been tried here) were of terrible, terrible legal reasoning & premise yet were a betterment for the world from having occured.
I'm sorry but for me, not having any judicial experience does not preclude a person's candiancy for any judgeship, let alone a top one. I think it gives them a certain perspective that everyday people are dealing w/. For the writing & legal precedents & stuff, that's where the nonexperienced person can coordinate & compare notes w/ those of the same opinion, to iron out the loopholes & get it to sound reasoning.
What is more concerning at least for me is Paterson's descision making, at least in terms of appointments, of late. You already know about the failed Caroline Kennedy debacle & now this State Supreme Court guy. Wow, talk about not even hiding the nepotism.
BTW, I'm not trying to say that I wouldn't be concerned if at least half or more of the judges had no experience...but like 1. No, that is of little concern to me.
Bear in mind that this guy is not merely an associate judge but the chief judge. Which means that he has significant added responsibilities. Most notably choosing which cases to hear and basically running the entire NYS court system. His predecessor, Judith Kaye, has been pushing for comprehensive reform of the convoluted NYS court system into something more rational.
The fact that he has no experience as a judge or lawyer is troubling enough, in my opinion. That he got the job (which as I said is more than simply being a judge) solely based on his friendship with Silver inspires even less confidence.
As I said, the points you make are not bad ones if we're talking about an ordinary judge. I just think the chief judge in the entire state, given his responsibilities, is different.
His inexperience only furthers the perception that he only got the job because he was the speaker's childhood pal. And as you know, in matters of justice, appearances are important.
Furthermore, the process for picking a Court of Appeals judge (highest court in NYS) is unusual.
The state constitution requires a special panel to present the governor with five (I believe) choices and he is required to pick one of them. He doesn't have free reign like the president does in picking a US Supreme Court justice.
Is the duties of the chief judge at the state level? THAT much different than the Federal level? I ask because I honestly don't know.
Like I know at the Federal level, the only difference dutywise between the Chief & the Associates is that (literally) he's in charge of the upkeep on the building.
As well as how they pick cases, the Feds only need like 3 or 4 people to think that their are merits in the appeal that are worth hearing. From my understanding it could be any 3 or 4 judges, not just limited to the
Chief.
The chief judge in NYS is responsible for overseeing the entire state court system. The lower level criminal courts, family court, civil court, etc etc. S/he doesn't just run the high court but administrates the entire state judiciary. I think the chief judge or his office was involved in trying to get office space for Bob Muller, the GF guy who was just elected to as a Supreme Court (trial court) justice. It's down to that level that the chief judge or at least his office is dealing with stuff.
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