Dedication to Judith S. Kaye.

• Author: Krane, Steven C.
• Position: New York Court of Appeals chief judge - Testimonial

What can you say about the longest serving chief judge in the history of the Court of Appeals that has not already been said? What superlative can you use to describe a woman who has transformed the position of chief executive officer of the New York State court system that does not seem inadequate or trite? How can you possibly pay tribute to one of the great jurists of our time in a few short pages? The answers to all these questions are obvious. You cannot do justice to the Chief Judge through mere words. Many, including this writer, have tried mightily, and volumes of words have been uttered in various combinations in an effort to describe the transcendent nature of this great New Yorker's contributions to New York--all without avail. But words are all we have sometimes, and we often just have to make do. I have been asked to pay tribute to a woman who was not just a brilliant jurist, but a role model for women and men alike. It is a daunting task, but a joyous one at the same time.

I had the great honor to serve as a law clerk to Judith Kaye, then the junior Associate Judge on the Court of Appeals. Had she been able to drive--she never earned her driver's license--Judith Kaye would have driven a car bearing a "Court of Appeals 7" license plate. Within a few short years she had moved up in seniority to "Court of Appeals 3" due to the ill-advised and nonsensical law that required us to put Court of Appeals judges such as Hugh Jones, Matthew Jasen, and Bernard Meyer out to pasture at the ridiculously young age of seventy. And by 1993, less than ten years after her appointment to the bench, after a brilliant career as a commercial litigator, she had been named the Chief Judge of the State of New York, entrusted with the leadership of the court system in the wake of the arrest and resignation of the former Chief Judge Sol Wachtler. She turned down offers to become a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and our nation's Attorney General, deciding instead to devote her efforts to the courts of the State of New York, serving as our Chief Judge for the past fourteen years, longer than any of her twenty-one predecessors. The nation's loss has been New York's gain. As a jurist, and as an administrator, Chief Judge Kaye has made New York proud.

Judith A. Smith was born in 1938 in Monticello, New York. Her parents were Polish Jews who had immigrated to the United States in the face of religious persecution. Young Judith began her schooling in a one-room schoolhouse, but when she was six the family moved into the village of Monticello and opened a ladies clothing store. She worked at the store from the time she was old enough to reach the countertop--about age twelve--all the way through college. While attending Monticello High School, she participated on the debate team and was editor of the student newspaper. Graduating at the age of fifteen, having skipped two grades, Kaye was admitted to Barnard College. Although she hoped to fulfill her ambition of being a journalist (she had spent summers during high school working at the Evening News, a local paper, in addition to the family store), Barnard did not offer a journalism degree. Instead, Kaye majored in Latin American Civilization while serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Barnard Bulletin and as a campus stringer for the New York Herald Tribune.

Although Kaye graduated from Barnard in 1958 with the ambition of becoming a foreign correspondent, her first job was as a reporter for the Hudson Dispatch, a daily newspaper in Union City, New Jersey, where she was assigned to the society page. Thinking that a law degree would enhance her chances of becoming an international reporter, Kaye entered the New York University School of Law. She took classes at night while working by day as a copy...