‘Clean’ judicial politics gets dirty as independent screening panel is bypassed

We don’t like electing judges. Merit selection by the president, governor and mayor — while still subject to Washington and Albany and City Hall politics — is far superior.

However, since most New York judges are elected, a rigorous judicial screening process is at least a check at preventing the unqualified from getting on the bench. More than 50 years ago, Manhattan Democratic reformers decided to shed their notorious Tammany Hall legacy and adopt a strict set of rules using a double blind screening panel.

The party would ask outside groups of lawyers to select someone to serve on the screening panel and party leaders pledged to only support candidates who won the panel’s approval.

It was better than the other boroughs, where the backroom ran the show, but only if the rules were followed and this year the rules are being bent to the breaking point. If the Manhattan party doesn’t reverse course immediately, their half-century claim of being cleaner than the other parties will be just empty words.

This year Manhattan has three vacancies for state Supreme Court justice, the highest elected bench. Party leader Keith Wright and the party’s Judiciary Committee asked law Prof. Meredith Miller to act as the administrator, coordinating the 17 panelists chosen by the attorney organizations.

There were 19 lower court judges who applied to the panel, which interviewed all of them. Under the rules, the panel could recommend up to three contenders for each vacancy, so nine in this instance.

On July 20, they finished their work and handed it to Wright. He announced the nine selected: Christopher Chin, James Clynes, Ashley Crawford, Paul Goetz, Hasa Kingo, Ilana Marcus, Eric Schumacher, Aija Mai Tingling and Kathleen Waterman Marshall.

Additionally, the rules were amended some years to grandfather in any candidate who was twice approved in the course of four years. This year there are seven of them, again, all lower court judges: Shahabuddeen Ally, Lyle Frank, Suzanne Jean Adams, Judy Hee-jung Kim, Gerald Lebovits, Phaedra Fane Perry, and Leslie Ann Stroth.

Then, late last week, Wright said that the panel had “failed to comply with significant procedural guidelines” (without saying what they were) and the report was being rejected. All 19 who applied, including the 10 who were rejected, will be eligible for a judgeship.

Normally the names of the losers are confidential, but now they’ve been published: Ariel Chesler, Denise Dominguez, Josh Hanshaft, Jeanine Johnson, Emily Morales-Minerva, Nicholas Moyne, Lou Nock, Elizabeth Shamahs, Richard Tsai and John Wang.

The screen is gone; everyone was approved. This system was created by three men. Bob Levinsohn died at age 94 in 2014. Stanley Geller died at age 98 in 2018. But Victor Kovner is in excellent health at age 87 and we spoke to him yesterday. He is “outraged” and insisted we print his outrage.

Kovner said, “I wrote the resolution” for double blind screening committees which has “has produced a respected, diverse court.” He said in the old days even criminals could be nominated and remembered one arsonist from Brooklyn.

It is clear that the panel did nothing wrong and its report was rejected as a ruse. The “remedy” of letting everyone in is the clue that this was a phony setup.