Saturday, September 19, 2020

The Role of New York's Chief Judge: Kaye’s, Lippman’s, and DiFiore’s Executive Emphases

By Kieran Murphy
Kieran Murphy
, a 2020 graduate of Albany Law School, was the Executive Director of the Anthony V. Car
dona Moot Court Program, an Associate Editor of the Albany Law Review, a Dean Thomas Sponsler Honors Teaching Fellow, and President of the Class of 2020. Prior to attending Albany Law, Kieran received a B.S. in Integrative Neuroscience and a B.A. in Economics from Binghamton University. 

While in law school, Kieran served as a judicial extern to the Hon. Thomas J. McAvoy of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, and to the Hon. John C. Egan Jr. of the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department. He is the recipient of the New York State Bar Association’s 2019 Judith S. Kaye Outstanding Advocate Award, and a member of the National Order of the Barristers. 
After sitting for the October 2020 Bar Exam, Kieran will begin his legal practice in the litigation department of Milbank, LLP. 


Most often, judges are criticized for decisions that relate to their performance on the bench.  Whether it be their non-compliance with stare decisis, inconsistencies among cases within the same area of the law, or just flat-out disagreement with their analytical processes, the reproach judges experience tends to stem directly from the cases.  Much less chastised, and certainly much less analyzed, is the executive decision-making we give to the chief judges on high courts.  

This paper addresses the policy emphases of the three most recent Chief Judges of the New York Court of Appeals.  Additionally, it analyzes the execution of those policies to determine the extent to which each Chief Judge succeeded in implementing their initiatives.
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To read the paper, open HERE.