Reprinted from New York Property Rights Clearinghouse Vol. 10 No. 1 Winter 2006
Federal Judge Orders Overhaul of Selection of New York State Supreme Court Judges
A Brooklyn federal judge ordered on January 27 that the selection process for candidates for the Supreme Court judges throughout New York State must be overhauled to remove control from the party bosses and be changed to a democratic process. In his 77-page decision from the bench of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Justice John Gleeson directed that until the Legislature establishes a new judicial selection process, the candidate judges for each county’s State Supreme Court must be selected by the voters in the primaries.
The established system has meant that party conventions at
each county are merely rubber-stamp votes for the selections of
justices by the Democratic and Republican party bosses, Gleeson
observed. He stated, “The plaintiffs have demonstrated convincingly
that local major party leaders…control who becomes a Supreme
Court justice and when.” Brooklyn Surrogate Judge Margarita
Lopez Torres and a group of both Democrats and Republicans brought
the lawsuit. Torres had bucked the Brooklyn Democratic leader
Clarence Norman by refusing to hire a law secretary backed by
the party. The New York Times reported that “Torres
has long declined to play the Brooklyn Democratic organization’s
game.” Torres previously broke ground by being the first
Hispanic female to sit on the bench in Kings County. It is not
yet known whether the ruling will be appealed. The decision was
called a “stunning blow to political party bosses” by
the New York Daily News.
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