Honoring Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye.

• Author: Roseblatt, Albert M.
• Position: New York Court of Appeals chief judge - Testimonial

Two people, above all others, have espoused the New York State Constitution in ways that carry historical importance. The two share a number of attributes. Both are widely esteemed and have had considerable influence on the nation's judiciary. One of them is here today, our honoree, Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, who in her academic and judicial writings has surely done more to advance our state constitution than anyone else alive.

The other person cannot be here today; he died in 1836. He and Chief Judge Kaye share a connection not only with the New York State Constitution, but with Monticello [Mont-i-sel-lo]--although, he probably would have pronounced it "Monticello" [Mont-i-chel-lo]. I'm speaking, of course, of James Madison, who was elected president some 200 years ago. Although Madison lived at a place called Montpelier (not "Mont-peel-yer"), he would have visited his friend Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, much the same as Judith Kaye spent quality time in Monticello, working at her parents' store on Main Street in Sullivan County, New York.

In 1786, presaging his role as America's constitutional architect, James Madison was studying the systems of other governments. He looked at ancient ones and those recently established by the states. And here, it is important to remember that when the United States drafted its Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787, we in New York had been operating under our own state constitution since 1777. It was in the New York Constitution of 1777 that Madison and the federal government found language to serve as a model for provisions in the United States Constitution. Madison thought New York's to be the "one state constitution that [he] endorsed almost completely." (1)

We had just emerged from a monarchy, fearful of executive power and its excess; Madison recognized that a constitution that leaned too far in the opposite direction would be inefficient and dangerous. Like Goldilocks's cereal, New York's constitution was not so cold as to deprecate the role of the population, but not so hot as to cast out all executive power. He deemed our constitution, for that hour, just right.

The document was founded upon the separation of powers, a concept at the heart of our divorce from the English monarchy. Listen to the language of the first article of New York's 1777 constitution: "No authority shall, on any pretense whatever, be exercised over the people or members of this State but such as shall be derived from and...