Kudos to acting state Chief Judge Anthony Cannataro for his well-deserved slap at state senators who thuggishly deep-sixed Gov. Kathy Hochul’s nomination of Hector LaSalle to become chief judge over claims he’s insufficiently progressive.
The horror! LaSalle testified that he’d be “constrained by precedent” and “statute.” Exactly right: Anyone who intends otherwise has no place on the bench.
Yet the hard-left lawmakers — Sens. Brad Hoylman-Sigal (D-Manhattan), Jessica Ramos (D-Queens), even Toby Ann Stavisky (D-Queens) — don’t see it that way. They openly state their desire to take the Court of Appeals, state’s top court, “in a different direction” and rejected LaSalle (the first time ever for a top-judge nominee) for not going along.
Cannataro’s response, in his State of the Judiciary speech, was both scathing and on point. He reminded lawmakers that courts aren’t legislatures in our “tricameral” system; judges aren’t supposed to veer to the left or right but stick to the law — and he quoted a liberal superstar US Supreme Court justice to back him up.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s nominee for chief judge Hector LaSalle watches the senate vote on his nomination in the Senate Chamber. Hans Pennink“Our rulings may not always be popular,” Cannataro said, but “as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cautioned . . . society must always be mindful of the proper role of the judiciary, because democracy can be destroyed if judges dare to rule as Platonic guardians.”
Indeed, he continued, “judicial ethics” bar judges from rulings “based on personal political or religious views,” and New York’s judiciary has always “supported the essential pillars of our democracy by delivering fair and impartial justice without regard to political persuasion or the headwinds of public opinion.”
Judges must “follow and enforce the law as we understand it” and “dispense justice without fear or favor.”
Anthony Cannataro told those in his State of the Judiciary speech that judges aren’t supposed to veer to the left or right but stick to the law. APThat was a stinging rebuke to Ramos’ suggestion that judges take a “broader reading” of statutes and Stavisky’s demand that LaSalle “remedy” what she saw as the court’s “shift” to the right.
Connect the dots with the RBG quote: Both senators, indeed the entire Gianaris camorra, have declared war on an “essential pillar of our democracy.”
In the next month or two, Hochul must tap a new chief-judge nominee. Pray she takes her cues from Cannataro — and not the Legislature’s radicals.
