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Common Threads of Justice: New Amici Podcast with Marilyn Marcus

July 31, 2020July 31, 2020Historical Society of the New York CourtsBlog, Common Threads of Justice

Marilyn Marcus was recently featured in the Unified Court System’s Amici Podcast with John Caher to discuss our important project Dispensing Justice from a Distance: Journal of the NYS Courts During the 2020 Pandemic. As Marilyn notes, Dispensing Justice seeks to tell the individual stories of judges and court staff on-the-ground during the pandemic, handling essential matters, conducting virtual hearings, and ensuring everyone continues to get their day in court – showcasing in real time through these shared experiences how the courts never closed. It will also explore administration in various courthouses with administrative judges up the chain to Chief Judge Janet DiFiore and Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence K. Marks how the courts achieved this remarkable feat of going from in-person to remote working with the technology staff of the court system.

Common Threads of Justice: Founding Father James Kent Podcast

July 10, 2020July 31, 2020Historical Society of the New York CourtsBlog, Common Threads of Justice

In the continuation of our podcast series Chatting with the Authors, Judicial Notice author Hon. Robert S. Smith, retired Associate Judge of the NYS Court of Appeals, spoke to guest interviewer Daniel F. Loud about his article on James Kent – just in time for the Fourth of July. Kent had an illustrious career in the years following the American Revolution, and is best remembered for his decisions and written commentaries which helped shape the burgeoning common law in America. In this interesting podcast, Judge Smith provides his insights about the choices Kent made in his legal and judicial career.

Common Threads of Justice: Harlem Law Program Podcast

June 19, 2020June 19, 2020Historical Society of the New York CourtsBlog, Common Threads of Justice

The Society is proud of its longstanding partnership with Bard College, and specifically Bard High School Early College. With Bard, the Society has developed lesson plans and other curricula, teachers workshops across the state, and a fellowship that brings lawyers and scholars into the classroom to teach students about the important role of the courts in our society and empower students to understand the rights afforded to them by this branch of government.

Common Threads of Justice: Chatting & Blogging with Judicial Notice Authors

June 12, 2020June 12, 2020Historical Society of the New York CourtsBlog, Common Threads of Justice

As we continue to socially distance, we’ve been bringing to you digitally what we couldn’t bring to you physically: Issue 15 of Judicial Notice! Our authors have provided preview blog posts, highlighting the key stories of the important legal luminaries they profiled in their articles. The series of posts is now complete, and as the courts enter reopening phases, we hope to mail this issue soon.

Common Threads of Justice: Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage Month Closing

May 29, 2020June 4, 2020Historical Society of the New York CourtsBlog, Common Threads of Justice

As we end the month of May, we conclude our celebration of Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage Month with a new podcast and blog post.

In the podcast, Jacob Y. Chen, a partner at Dai & Associates PC who became involved in this project through Trustee David L. Goodwin, interviews Hon. Doris Ling-Cohan, Appellate Term, First Dept., about her experiences as a pioneering Asian American judge in the NY Court System, and her motivation to become a founding member of the Asian American Bar Association. Justice Ling-Cohan reflects on discrimination she has faced and the importance of role models in her career development.

Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage Month

May 27, 2020May 28, 2020Historical Society of the New York CourtsBlog1 Comment

This blog article was written by Karen Lin. Karen joined the New York State courts in 1999 as a law clerk in New York County Supreme Court, Civil Division. She is a former New York City Housing Court judge and currently serves as a court attorney referee in Kings County Surrogate’s Court. She is co-chair of the Pro Bono and Community Service Committee of the Asian American Bar Association of New York.

Editor’s Note: Opinions contained in this blog article are those of the author, and do not express any opinions or policies of the Historical Society of the New York Courts.

In honor of Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage Month, I am so pleased that the Historical Society of the New York Courts is recognizing the diversity of our state and its people by celebrating the history, achievements, and challenges of diverse Americans.

The month of May was designated by Congress as Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage Month to coincide with two milestones in American history: the arrival in the United States of the first Japanese immigrants in May 7, 1843, and contributions of Chinese workers to the building of the transcontinental railroad, completed May 10, 1869. But even before them, the first Asians to arrive in North America were Filipino sailors in the late 1500s. Some settled in Louisiana in 1763, working as shrimp fishermen and who would later serve under General Jackson in the War of 1812. The first significant wave of immigration from Korea started on January 13, 1903, when a shipload of Korean immigrants arrived in Hawaii to work on pineapple and sugar plantations. South Asians were noted to have been in the United States since the 1700s and 1800s, from the regions of Punjab and Bengal. Starting in the 1970s, Southeast Asian refugees resettled in the United States from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, fleeing the trauma of war and violence following the Khmer Rouge genocide, mass bombings in Laos, and the Vietnam War. Asian Americans are now the fastest growing major racial or ethnic group in the United States, numbering 22.6 million in 2018.

Common Threads of Justice: The Lemmon Slave Case Videocast

May 22, 2020June 4, 2020Historical Society of the New York CourtsBlog, Common Threads of Justice

We recently completed a very special videocast The Evolution of Slavery, Abolition in NY, and the NY Courts: The Lemmon Slave Case with Dennis E. Glazer and Hon. Albert M. Rosenblatt. Affirmed by the Court of Appeals in 1860, the Lemmon Slave Case illustrates how NYS law was ahead of federal in finding that slaves brought into the State were not property. This went against the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, decided three years earlier.

George Wickersham: “The Scourge of Wall Street”

May 20, 2020June 2, 2020Historical Society of the New York CourtsBlog, Judicial Notice, Judicial Notice 15 Preview

This blog article was written by John Oller, an author and retired New York lawyer whose latest book is White Shoe: How a New Breed of Wall Street Lawyers Changed Big Business—and the American Century (Dutton, March 2019), from which his upcoming Judicial Notice Issue 15 article, “George Wickersham: ‘The Scourge of Wall Street,’” is adapted. He may be found at www.johnollernyc.com. Below is a preview of the article.

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Introduction

In New York legal circles today, the name Wickersham is most closely associated with the law firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, the oldest in New York City. The actual man behind the name, George Wickersham, is less well known to current generations. Yet from roughly 1900 to his death in 1936, George Wickersham was one of the most renowned and influential lawyers of his time. He began his career creating and defending large corporations, then switched sides, as US attorney general under William Howard Taft from 1909 to 1913, to become known as “the scourge of Wall Street” for his aggressive prosecution of antitrust cases.

Early Life and Career

Born in Pittsburgh in 1858, Wickersham started out at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania intending to become civil engineer, but a literature professor who spotted in Wickersham a taste for letters persuaded him to “give up the study of calculus for that of Blackstone.” He obtained his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1880 and moved to New York City in 1882 to take a clerkship with the firm of Chamberlain, Carter & Hornblower. It was a progenitor of the “white shoe” firms and lawyers who would dominate the legal world for many decades of the twentieth century.

Common Threads of Justice: Lessons Learned from the 1918 Pandemic Webinar

May 15, 2020June 4, 2020Historical Society of the New York CourtsBlog, Common Threads of Justice

On Monday, May 11th, we hosted our first webinar Lessons Learned from the 1918 Pandemic: Historical and Legal Framework of the Spanish Flu and How It Relates to Today’s Crisis, sponsored by Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP. It featured Ernest A. Abbott, Muhammad U. Faridi, and Sandra Opdycke, and was moderated by our Chair Stephen P. Younger. The program traced how the flu spread during World War I and how the government and courts responded, exploring cases, connections, differences, and lessons learned that make an impact on the current pandemic.

An All-Star Criminal Trial in the Gilded Age: United States v. William Fullerton (March 1870)

May 13, 2020June 2, 2020Historical Society of the New York CourtsBlog, Judicial Notice, Judicial Notice 15 Preview

This blog article was written by John D. Gordan, III, and it’s a preview of his Judicial Notice Issue 15 article on United States v. William Fullerton. Mr. Gordan is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and clerked from 1969-1971 for the Hon. Inzer B. Wyatt, U.S. District Judge (S.D.N.Y.). From 1971-1976 he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and thereafter engaged in full-time private practice in New York City until 2011. He was one of the founders of the Historical Society of the New York Courts and a member of its board; several of his articles have previously been published in Judicial Notice. His most recent book is entitled This Practice Against Law — Cuban Slave Trade Cases in the Southern District of New York, 1839-1841.

Judicial Notice Issue 15 is on the way, but we ran into a slight delay and are unable to send the newest edition to your homes. Who are the four men profiled in this new issue? Find out each week as our authors preview their impressive articles.

The new issue of Judicial Notice contains an article about the trial of William Fullerton, who in 1867 sat on the New York Court of Appeals. On September 14, 1868, Fullerton was appointed by President Andrew Johnson to prosecute evaders of the 1864 federal whiskey tax in the federal court in New York. On November 23, 1868, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Samuel G. Courtney, obtained Fullerton’s indictment for alleged participation in the shakedown of a Revenue Collector in June 1868. Earlier in November, Fullerton had traveled to Washington to warn the President and the Secretary of the Treasury that Courtney was in league with the whiskey tax evaders. That warning had earlier been given by John M. Binckley, a former Acting Attorney General who was the first to be assigned responsibilities similar to Fullerton’s but who resigned after a month. Fullerton was tried and acquitted in March 1870.

Surprising as this story sounds, it nevertheless pales in comparison with the “Whiskey Ring” conspiracy centered in the Midwest, primarily St. Louis, magnified starting in 1871, with the assignment of John McDonald to St. Louis as Supervisor of Internal Revenue for the Midwest. Apparently conceived in aid of political fundraising, the “Whiskey Ring”, operated by local Internal Revenue officers in collaboration with distillers and other participants in the manufacturing process, generated substantial illicit revenues through the evasion of the whiskey tax. Some of these moneys were applied to the campaign expenses of President Ulysses S. Grant.

Judicial Notice is a members-exclusive publication! Make sure to join or renew your membership to receive your copy. Join or Renew Your Membership

Judicial Notice is a members-exclusive publication! Make sure to join or renew your membership to receive your copy.
Join or Renew Your Membership