After clearing hurdles in the Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate, Rowan Wilson has become the first Black to rise to the position of chief judge of the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.
The 62-year-old Manhattan resident battled rough waters on two decisions he rendered on the seven-member court. Wilson will oversee a budget of more than $3 billion.
On Monday, April 17, Wilson easily cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee with only four dissenting votes. On Tuesday, April 18, he also cleared the 63-member upper house on a primarily party-line vote. He was then sworn in.
There was some common ground regarding Wilson’s nomination. Both detractors and supporters praised him for his writing and grammar style. His detractors thought he would be better suited as a law professor than chief judge on the Court of Appeals.
Wilson’s victory was not without controversy, however. The New York chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW-NYC) voiced its objection to Wilson because he penned a decision that eventually led to the release of a rapist, Andrew Regan.
The objection stems from a decision Wilson wrote in the case People v. Regan last month. The case deals with a rape in which an appellate court found the defendant guilty. Because of multiple delays by both the police agency and the prosecution, the Court of Appeals ruled that the guilty verdict should be overturned and the rapist should be released from prison.
“As advocates for survivors of sexual assault, we are outraged that Judge Wilson voted to strip a rape survivor of justice; in fact, he wrote the opinion,” according to Sonia Ossorio, executive director of NOW-NYC, writing to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ossorio also told media outlets this decision “stripped the rape survivor of her justice and shocks the conscience.”
Wilson did have a chance to defend his decision at the Judiciary Committee.
Another controversial decision involved Happy the elephant, who is spending its entire life of 47 years and counting at the Bronx Zoo. The case encompassed whether Happy, an Asian elephant, could be released from the confines of the zoo because it is not living in its natural habitat. Animal rights activists argued Happy should be treated as a human and could be considered under the auspices of a writ of habeas corpus. Habeas corpus is Latin for “you should have the body” – that is, the judge or court should (and must) have any person who is being detained brought forward so that the legality of that person’s detention can be assessed as lawful under the U.S. Constitution.
It has been said that Wilson wrote the longest dissent in the 176-year history of the Court of Appeals:
“[A writ of habeas corpus] has never been granted to an animal. It has been granted to people who have no legal status as humans. My dissent there is not actually about the elephant,” Wilson explained to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It’s about several different things. One thing it is about is the function of our court as a common law court. We have the ability to shape the common law to meet changing circumstances in changing times. A smaller point about habeas corpus is we have courts deny writs of habeas corpus on the grounds that some human being is seeking a transfer from a condition of confinement to a condition of less restrictive confinement, we say the writ of habeas corpus can’t be used for that purpose. The major point of the opinion is to point out something quite different, which is that our understanding of all things we think of as true, whether scientifically true or morally true, we shouldn’t be so sure about them. I would have denied the writ of habeas corpus but I believe the elephant was entitled to raise that issue. That’s as far as I go. It’s not about Happy the elephant, it’s much more about you and me than it is about Happy.”
When asked to identify his philosophy on the court, Wilson responded that he is a “pragmatist.”
“I don’t know what is so pragmatic about releasing criminals and disregarding victims’ rights,” said Senator Anthony Palumbo (R – Southold, Suffolk County), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I don’t think that’s very pragmatic. He’s actually the opposite of a pragmatist because he is writing decisions and engaging in these intellectual exercises as to where the law should really go and what should be done, which I think is in and of itself specifically what an activist judge does. He threw out a rape conviction.”
Another Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee was not impressed with Wilson.
“What I saw in those dissents we read was an academic exercise. That’s what’s wrong with this. We have to provide justice to victims,” said Senator Jack Martins (R – Mineola, Nassau County). “We have to provide justice to those people who are disenfranchised and we need people on the highest court and the chief judge of this state that doesn’t treat it as an academic exercise but actually puts people first. I would like to see traditional candidates for the Court of Appeals. People who are well-grounded in our communities here in New York. I want to see ties to our New York communities and an understanding of what is or what is not important in these communities outside of the academic. If you look at those dissents and those concerns that we and everyone else should have about the theme that runs through those dissents, it’s academic and is anything but practical.”
Republican leadership surmised there is an ulterior motive for Democrats backing a liberal Democratic jurist to head the high court.
“What is the urgency?” asked Senate Republican Leader Robert Ortt (R – North Tonawanda, Niagara County). “My suspicion is there is a case involving redistricting coming before the high court at some point in May. That’s the urgency. That’s concerning to me.”
Before being nominated as an associate justice for the Court of Appeals in 2017 by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo, Wilson worked at the white-shoe midtown Manhattan law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He focused his practice on antitrust, intellectual property, securities fraud, and civil rights litigation.
Wilson is married and has four children. He was born in Pomona, California, received a Bachelor of Arts degree, graduating cum laude from Harvard College in 1981 and a Juris Doctor, graduating cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1984, where he was a member of the Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Law Review.
The Senate was expected to take up the nomination of former solicitor general of New York, Caitlin Halligan, 56, as an associate judge on the Court of Appeals to replace Wilson. That might have happened after The Jewish Press went to publication.
