Judith Kaye

Judith Ann Kaye ( Smith; August 4, 1938 – January 7, 2016) was an American lawyer, jurist and the longtime Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, serving in that position from March 23, 1993, until December 31, 2008.

She was the first woman to serve as chief judge, the highest judicial office in New York State, and the longest-serving chief judge in New York history.

Kaye was born as Judith Ann Smith in Monticello, New York on August 4, 1938.

Her parents, Benjamin and Lena (née Cohen) Smith, were Jewish immigrants from Poland who lived on a farm in Sullivan County, New York, and operated a women's apparel store.

She skipped two grades, graduating from Monticello High School (New York) aged fifteen.

She then graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University in 1958 with B.A. in Latin American civilization.

She became a reporter for the Union City, New Jersey Hudson Dispatch, where she was a society news reporter, but left to become a lawyer.

She worked as a copy editor during the day and attended night school at the New York University Law School, graduating with an LL.B. cum laude in 1962, as one of ten women in a class of almost 300.

Kaye was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1963.

She began her career in private practice in New York City at the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell.

Kaye left Sullivan & Cromwell to join the IBM legal department.

While raising a family, Kaye worked as a part-time assistant to the dean of the New York University Law School, her alma mater.

In 1969, Kaye was hired by the prominent law firm of Olwine, Connelly, Chase, O'Donnell & Weyher as a litigation associate.

In 1975, she became that firm's first female partner.

Mario Cuomo, a Democrat, made a campaign promise in his successful 1982 campaign for governor of New York to appoint a woman to the New York Court of Appeals—the state's highest court.

When the first vacancy arose, however, no woman appeared on the list submitted by the state Commission on Judicial Selection.

After another vacancy occurred, however, the commission listed two women on its list of seven candidates: Kaye (who was at the time 44 years old and a commercial litigator) and Betty Weinberg Ellerin (a judge on the New York Supreme Court, the trial court in New York, and the former president of the Women's Bar Association).

Cuomo interviewed Kaye twice and appointed her to the bench for a 14-year term, making her the first woman to serve on the court.

Kaye was nominated by Cuomo to be an associate judge on August 11, 1983.

She was confirmed unanimously by the senate on September 6, and then sworn in on September 12, 1983.

In November 1992, Chief Judge Sol Wachtler resigned after being arrested on charges that he extorted money from a former lover.

Cuomo nominated Kaye to fill the chief judge vacancy on February 22, 1993.

She was confirmed unanimously by the senate on March 17, and then sworn in on March 23, 1993.

With her term set to expire, Governor Eliot Spitzer renominated Kaye as chief judge on February 7, 2007.

She was confirmed by the senate on March 6, and sworn in on March 19, 2007.

In 2008, as Kaye approached mandatory retirement age, The New York Times editorial board praised her, writing: "In her 15 years as chief, Judith Kaye has excelled at both, earning national praise for her jurisprudence and as a court reformer."

As chief judge, Kaye pushed forward with judicial reform and modernization efforts.

New York State became a national leader in establishing problem-solving courts, which offered treatment and other alternatives to incarceration in cases involving addiction, mental illness, or domestic violence and abuse.

Kaye also took steps to make jury service more efficient and convenient.

Kaye also successfully pushed to eliminate all exemptions from jury service (a phrase Kaye preferred over "jury duty").

Kaye helped establish the Center for Court Innovation, a non-profit think tank that although independent of the court system, serves as the judiciary's research and development arm.

Kaye emphasized civil liberties and interpreted the Constitution of New York as providing broader protections in some areas than those provided for by the federal Constitution.

Kaye was viewed as a liberal, but was perceived as moving toward the pragmatic center after becoming chief judge, in an effort to build consensus among the justices.

According to judge Jonathan Lippmann who was her chief administrative judge and successor as chief judge "Judith Kaye essentially started a revolution, that has redefined the traditional role of the judiciary in addressing the difficult social problems reflected in our record-breaking court dockets: drug abuse, family violence and dysfunction, mental illness and so many more"

Kaye retired on December 31, 2008, after reaching the age of 70, the state's mandatory retirement age for judges.

Kaye had "made occasional negative references to the mandatory retirement requirement, once saying experienced jurists were being forced from the bench to the 'great detriment' of the courts."

Kaye gave her farewell speech on November 12, 2008, and formally retired on the last day of that year.

She was the longest-serving chief judge in New York history.

Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick briefly became acting chief judge after Kaye's retirement; Jonathan Lippman was nominated and confirmed to the post and was formally sworn in in February 2009.

The chief judge of New York has both an administrative role (overseeing the entire state court system, which in 2016 had about 16,000 employees ) and a judicial role (hearing and deciding appeals to the state's highest court).