New York maintains strict rules limiting the political activity of sitting judges and candidates for judicial office to assure that they “… [always] avoid even the appearance of impropriety … and … always act in a manner that promotes public confidence in the judiciary’s integrity and impartiality.”

Yet the process we have come to use for nominating and electing judges to serve on the state Supreme Court, not only as it is designed but as it has evolved through use, makes far more challenging the establishment of a public perception that justice in New York is neutral and equitable.

Nomination and Election of Judges: We New Yorkers elected or re-elected 32 Supreme Court judges this past November, three of these in the Third Judicial District, which includes Ulster County. (New York’s Supreme Court is not the state’s high court, name notwithstanding. Rather, it is the statewide trial court with the broadest jurisdiction, both in criminal and civil matters.) Supreme Court judges are elected at-large from 13 multi-candidate judicial districts in partisan elections. Nominations are made not by primary election, but in district-wide judicial conventions, largely controlled by party county leaders. Each of the five counties (boroughs) within New York City comprises a district. There are seven districts upstate, and one for the two counties on Long Island. The third district also includes the counties of Albany, Columbia, Greene, Rensselaer, Schoharie, Sullivan and, as noted, Ulster. In all but Schoharie, the least populous of these seven counties, enrolled Democrats outnumber enrolled Republicans.

The term of office for a Supreme Court judge in New York is 14 years, established to help assure judicial independence. He or she is constitutionally required to retire at the age of 70. However, if justified by workload, certification of three two-year temporary extensions of service by administrative action is possible.

Results in 2023: Party and Demography. Already established Democrat predominance in the state judiciary was reinforced by the elections’ outcomes; 22 of those elected in this year’s judicial cohort were candidates of that party, while 10 were advanced by the GOP. Most remarkably, of the six judges elected in the Second Judicial District (Brooklyn), five were women. These were part of a majority of those who were elected, though not the same 220 who were women. Their number augmented the 393 women already on the statewide bench (including 53 in the Supreme Court); this was 42.9 percent of all serving state judges who responded to a survey in that year by the Unified Court System. The outcomes of this past year’s Supreme Court contests also contribute to the growing diversity of the Supreme Court bench. Five of the newly elected judges are Black, two are of Hispanic heritage, and one claims roots in both the Black and Hispanic communities.

As for Ulster, all three winners this year in the Third Judicial District were Democrats from Albany County, the district’s most populous and most Democratic: Richard Rivera, Daniel C. Lynch and Sherri J. Brooks-Morton. The three bought a diversity of experience. First elected to the Family Court in Albany County in 2014, Rivera was appointed to the newly created position of Statewide Coordinating Judge for Family Court Matters just a month before becoming a Supreme Court judge. Also in Albany County, Lynch had been the county attorney and a longtime deputy prosecutor. And Brooks-Morton ran for the Supreme Court post as an incumbent Family Court judge. All brought in comfortable majorities; none needed the added votes delivered by a Working Families Party’s cross-endorsement to win. The sole Republican candidate, Dana Salazar, lost decisively, notwithstanding her Conservative Party cross-endorsement.

Competition? The job of Supreme Court Justice is high in status, prestige and power. It pays $232,600 a year, to start. Ulster’s make up a big piece of the district’s voting population. A hotly contested race for district attorney would bring Republican voters to the polls. You’d think one of our local GOP-connected lawyers would go for it. But even with the nomination there for the asking, no Republican from Ulster County was tempted. Massive demographic shifts in recent decades have fundamentally altered the partisan and ideological balance in our part of New York State while here, as elsewhere, Trumpism has shattered what remained of New York’s brand of moderate Republicanism. Politics has changed so much in our region in recent decades that it’s widely believed — probably accurately — that running as a GOP candidate for an important but obscure office is a waste of time and money.

This year, reflecting the magnitude and geographic centers of party strength in New York, the judges elected to the Supreme Court bench from seven of the 13 judicial districts were either Democrats or cross-endorsed at the Democrat district judicial nominating convention. Similarly, all the Republicans elected on that line, alone or with cross-endorsement, were from a different four districts, mostly rural, where their far more modest strength is centered. There was no vacancy, and therefore no election, in Districts 8 and 13.

That is, each of the major parties dominated non-competitive judicial elections in different regions of the state, in which it routinely nominates a single candidate for each open position. Candidacies for nomination not backed by the dominant party’s leadership — and competition from the non-dominant party in a judicial district — are rare. In 2024 Republicans ran a single candidate in four judicial districts dominated by Democrats; their full slate in District 9 in the New York City suburbs was rare, and, as expected, futile. Meanwhile, Democrats ran a single candidate in three Republican-dominated districts. (One of these, District 6, had only a single seat at stake.) In an additional district, token opposition to the Republican was mounted by a Working Families Party candidate.

Bullet Vote. The Salazar campaign in District 3 sought to make a virtue of necessity by urging its supporters to caste a “bullet vote.” That is, though there were three vacancies they urged their partisans to vote to fill only one and leave the others blank. The idea was to simultaneously deny votes to any Democrat and lower the plurality required to win, putting a victory within Salazar’s reach. It didn’t work.

Cross-Endorsement. New York’s election law permits a party’s candidate for office (with his or her own party’s consent) to accept endorsement and an added place on the ballot provided by one or more other parties. When it looks like an election for judge might actually be competitive and the outcome uncertain, major party leaders enter into an agreement to back each other’s candidate, removing competition from the mix and guaranteed victory to both. This was done in District 10 on Long Island in 2023 where Gary Carlton, a Democrat, and Cristopher McGrath, a Republican, were cross-endorsed by the two major parties. It appears that even when victory may not be at stake and there is little or no ideological rationale or anticipated effect on the outcome, presumed adversaries may offer cross-endorsement as a sort of gesture of good will. This year, for example, Republicans and Conservatives both endorsed dominant Democrats for Supreme Court seats in Brooklyn.

These Days, Judges Matter More

State Supreme Court judges in New York are commonly said to reach office by popular election. This is a fiction. These judges are actually chosen by party organization leaders, with this choice ratified by voters at the polls — or at least that fraction of voters willing to use their franchise to legitimize a process that is non-competitive by intent.

As division and deadlock immobilize our political branches, we increasingly have turned to the judiciary for decisions on some of our most pressing policy matters: voting rights, reproductive rights, criminal justice reform. At every level of government, and in virtually every area of policy, this has made courts and the views of those who run them even more consequential. And therefore — as we have learned from the partisan and/or ideologically driven trench warfare of judicial selection battles in Washington, the states, and even local government, those who may become judges matter a lot — who they are, what they have done, and what they think.

The contradiction between limiting recruitment of judges to those favored by entrenched political party leaders and then passing strict regulations to limit these judges’ political activities while they run and after they reach the bench is palpable. If the goal is truly to advance both the perception and reality of equal, equitable justice, the pool from which Supreme Court judges are recruited must be expanded beyond those favored by the party organizations.

The author is a former professor and dean at SUNY New Paltz and chaired the county's Charter Revision Commission, among many other accomplishments. To read more about him, click here.