When Dianne Renwick took over as presiding justice of the Appellate Division, First Division, she took on probably the most vital judicial positions within the state. She presided over a court docket that in 2023 disposed of greater than 4,700 appeals and greater than 5,000 motions, and swore in additional than 2,700 new attorneys to the bar.
Along with retaining the court docket working at full tempo, Renwick, 64, stated she has been reflecting on the necessity to create alternatives to diversify the state’s courts.
The First Division, which has jurisdiction over appeals from trial courts within the Bronx and Manhattan, performs a pioneering nationwide function because of the selection and novelty of the authorized points that come to the court docket.
“This court docket is among the premier courts within the nation,” Renwick stated. “They give the impression of being to this division as a result of it’s in New York. New York is the cultural capital and the monetary capital of the world.”
The First Division has cultivated an particularly notable popularity for its enterprise regulation selections. The primary Business Division was launched on an experimental foundation in Manhattan 1993 and expanded all through the state in 1995. However because the industrial and company heart of the state, the First Division typically guidelines on high-profile enterprise disputes that vary from labor points to actual property improvement to mergers, contracts and different areas.
When Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Renwick presiding justice in 2023, she grew to become the primary lady of shade to guide the court docket. Because the appellate division’s steward, Renwick stated she values excellence, respect and illustration. She stated she considers it her obligation to grant a voice to all of these generations of people that weren’t in a position to serve on the court docket by holding it to the very best potential customary.
“I really feel an awesome accountability to, it sounds cliche, however to make them proud,” she stated.
Renwick has moved to broaden entry since taking over the function of affiliate justice on the First Division bench in 2008. As chair of the Anti-bias Committee, for instance, she led an effort to put in a feminine sculpture to the uniformly male figures that line the courthouse roof.
A top-line accomplishment in her first yr as presiding justice was institution of the Justice Ahead initiative, a program that brings New York Metropolis faculty children into the courts to assist them perceive the significance of civics and the function of the courts in their very own lives. In September, she made one other imprint on the court docket when she changed the nameplate of the U.S. Supreme Court docket Choose and writer of the Dredd Scott determination, Roger Taney, within the courtroom’s ornate stained-glass dome with that of Constance Baker Motley, a civil rights hero who grew to become the primary Black lady appointed to the federal bench in 1966.
Insistence on Professionalism
As presiding justice, Renwick critiques the selections that the court docket renders within the appellate course of, and she or he sits on various committees that play a key function in court docket operations. Amongst these underneath her jurisdiction are the Legal professional Grievance Committee, which handles complaints in opposition to attorneys; the Character and Health Committee, which critiques functions for admission to the bar; and the Assigned Counsel Plan, which appoints attorneys to deal with indigent defendants in felony instances and attorneys for youngsters in Household Court docket.
The 21 justices appointed by the governor to The First Division bench sit in four-judge panels to listen to appeals. The court docket switched from five-judge panels in 2019 as a result of a rise in quantity of instances and no improve within the variety of judges. As every panel modifies or clarifies a decrease court docket’s judgment or order, Renwick requires that every determination be nicely written, and completely researched and thought by.
She expects the identical stage of professionalism from attorneys who come earlier than the court docket. Her recommendation to attorneys: know your info.
“Folks prefer to say it’s a sizzling bench. What does that imply? It implies that the court docket is aware of the info of the instances. And so, we often leap proper to it,” Renwick stated.
Renwick’s dedication to excellence got here out of her upbringing within the Bronx. Her mother and father had been each immigrants from Grenada who, although not formally educated, understood the significance of schooling. Her father, who was a union carpenter and her mom, a seamstress, had been among the first folks of shade to maneuver into the neighborhood of Williamsbridge within the northeast Bronx, successfully integrating it.
“They had been individuals who weren’t afraid. They had been very certain of themselves,” Renwick stated.
Broad Perspective Gained From Expertise
Rising up within the Civil Rights period, Renwick recollects being impacted by her mother and father’ horror on the information protection of the Jim Crow south. Throughout her undergraduate schooling at Cornell College, Renwick obtained concerned within the anti-apartheid motion, and later on the Cardozo Faculty of Legislation the place she graduated in 1986, she took an curiosity in felony justice working with lawyer Barry Scheck, who went on to start out the Innocence Challenge. She started her authorized profession as a workers lawyer for the Bronx workplace of the Authorized Support Society’s Prison Protection Division earlier than becoming a member of the Federal Defenders the place she represented felony defendants earlier than the U.S. District Court docket for the Japanese District of New York.
“That’s knowledgeable my perspective on the bench as a result of it’s important to actually respect folks and admire the place they’re coming from,” Renwick stated. “It doesn’t matter what they’ve carried out and the way dangerous it’s, it’s important to sit throughout from them and provides them that respect.”
Renwick joined the bench as a housing court docket decide in 1997 earlier than town’s proper to counsel regulation was handed. Again then, judges had an awesome stage of accountability to make sure that defendants truly understood their authorized rights, she stated. “It was a docket that was heavy and consistently transferring,” she stated. “If you’re simply not listening to what they’re saying, to have the ability to ask them one other query there, they might simply be trampled at the moment.”
Creating Alternatives
Renwick stays keenly conscious of the historic absence of ladies and other people of shade from the New York state judiciary. However demographic adjustments within the court docket proceed in phases, Renwick identified.
Betty Weinberg Ellerin was the primary lady appointed to the court docket in 1985 and named presiding justice in 1999. Although solely 22 of 140 justices within the court docket’s historical past have been girls, by 2024 girls grew to become a majority of the 21 justices on the First Division bench.
For Renwick, schooling is the pressure that should be deployed to diversify the court docket system.
“What’s so vital to me is making certain that there’s a pipeline. Proper now once we admit attorneys, there are hardly any black males attorneys, hardly any black girls — folks of shade,” she stated.
To this finish, the Justice Ahead initiative is aimed toward exposing college students in grades 6 by 12 from colleges in Bronx and Manhattan to profession alternatives that intersect with the judiciary and authorized occupation. First Division Justice Bahaati Pitt-Burke, who succeeded Renwick because the chair of the Anti-bias Committee, is main the initiative, which brings college students into the courthouse to satisfy judges, hearken to oral arguments and talk about instances.
Renwick stated her objective is to supply a bunch of scholars who sooner or later will say, “ I went to that program. I went to it yr after yr, or I got here to the court docket on these days and I heard from these judges, and I realized how vital it might be if I grew to become a lawyer.’”
