May 29, 2017
After 34 years on the bench, Justice Karen Peters, who was the first woman to be appointed Presiding Justice of New York State’s Appellate Division of the Third Department, is retiring. Prior to her appointment to the Third Department (which encompasses 28 counties, including Ulster) by Governor Mario Cuomo in 1994 (she was subsequently appointed presiding justice by Mario’s son, Governor Andrew Cuomo, in 2012), Justice Peters was the first woman elected to the Supreme Court in the Third Department, in 1992. Her path-breaking career, in which she not only broke the glass ceiling but also garnered numerous awards, is all the more extraordinary considering neither of her parents finished high school.
Justice Peters attended law school at New York University, which at that time was extending scholarships to more women and people of color. After graduating in 1972, she moved upstate and had a private practice in New Paltz, focused on criminal defense and family and matrimonial law. She also taught at SUNY New Paltz, creating curricula in civil rights and civil liberties, sex discrimination in the law and criminal law. Her experience as a criminal defense attorney (at the time, the only female one in Ulster County) led to her serving as assistant district attorney in the DA’s office in Dutchess County before she was hired as counsel to the New York State Division of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, a new agency created out of the Office of Mental Health.
She was then hired by New York Assemblyman Mel Zimmer, who was head of Government Operations, to direct the Government Operations Committee. In 1983, she ran for the judgeship of Ulster County Family Court and—to everyone’s surprise—won, the first woman to do so.
Kathleen Carey Mihm, who served two terms in the Ulster County Legislature before becoming deputy commissioner for the Board of Elections, worked on Peters’ campaign in Rosendale. “She was very hard working,” Mihm recalled. “She was with you rain or shine and always very supportive of folks walking with her. She was no-nonsense and very smart. Whenever someone tried to say something disparaging, she didn’t rise to the bait. She was tremendous. She kept the peace and served Ulster County very well.”
A decade later, Peters was nominated for judge in the State Supreme Court, Third Department, and won.
A long-time resident of Woodstock, Justice Peters was a single parent who raised a son—now grown and residing in Brooklyn—whom she adopted as a baby from India. Lynn Woods recently interviewed Justice Peters by phone about how she broke the glass ceiling and other high points of her career:
LW: You grew up on Long Island and were the first person in your family to complete college. What did you learn from your parents?
JP: My father, who died when I was 13, was a fascinating man and a great businessman. He was a compassionate person who was a founding member of the AA chapter in New York City in the 1940s. He was familiar with the struggles of alcoholism and the life of the Bowery. He taught me my life had to speak more firmly than my lips. What you did was more important than what you said.
LW: How did you get interested in law?
JP: I got involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement when I was in college in Washington, D.C. I met my first lawyer, who was representing my friends, and was fascinated to see what a lawyer did. I saw how important it was that people have representation.
Also while in college, I worked for a criminologist and law professor, who were working on a research project in the family courts in Montgomery County, Maryland. The research involved juvenile offenders and assessing whether girls were treated the same way as boys. Both of them encouraged me to go to graduate school.
LW: What led to your interest in criminal defense?
JP: Although you weren’t supposed to, during my first year of law school I worked so that I could eat, doing independent research for trial lawyers, who would ask me to write this brief or memo for them. [After graduating,] I could have applied for a job on Wall Street, but that would have required comporting myself in ways I wasn’t sure I wanted to follow. For example, there were dress codes, and the white shoe law firms asked you what kind of birth control you used, because they didn’t want to invest in you if you were going to have a baby. It was very discriminatory.
The key to each success is taking risks. I had a job in New York City doing legal work with a man who had a Guggenheim Fellowship researching the state’s alcohol beverage control system. I could telecommute from that job so I moved upstate and hung out a shingle and began practicing law in New Paltz. I also started teaching in the women’s studies and political science departments at SUNY New Paltz.
LW: What brought you upstate?
JP: While I was in law school, my favorite law professor died of a heart attack and was buried in the Woodstock Artists’ Cemetery. I had never been north of Westchester County but came to the funeral and while standing in the cemetery decided this is where I wanted to live.
LW: In another interview, you talk about how one of the challenges in being appointed to the Third Department’s Appellate Division was the lack of a convenient women’s bathroom. The anecdote reminded me of the scene in Hidden Figures where the female African American engineer at NASA has to walk an enormous distance to use the “colored” bathroom, taking up so much time her boss eventually notices her absence. Was it this kind of imposition that was most annoying?
JP: A lot of struggles [regarding civil and gender rights] over time have been about public accommodation. It was so extraordinary that there was a barrier. When I ran for family court and got elected, there was one bathroom for the two family court judges, who were both men. To everyone’s surprise, after I got elected the remaining male judge easily agreed that we share the bathroom. When I got appointed to the appellate division, there was one bathroom next to the conference room used by the judges, who were all men, so I had to go upstairs to the women’s bathroom and listen to women lawyers who I would be hearing talk about their cases. I convinced the presiding judge to put a lock on the door of the bathroom near the conference room so I could use it too.
LW: Why did you want to serve as counsel to the NYS Division of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse?
JP: When I did criminal defense and family law I was also a lawyer for the student government at SUNY New Paltz, providing legal counsel to students, including issues related to their use of alcohol or drugs. Alcohol and drug abuse was pervasive in our community. Also I had a father who was a recovering alcoholic and so I understood the disease aspect. I applied for the job at the Division of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse blind and felt it was a great opportunity to meld my understanding of the law, family and youth with the state to come up with some method of dealing with the problem. I learned how to draft and negotiate legislation, including raising the drinking age to 19 (which was subsequently raised to 21).
LW: What led you to run for family court? It must have been a long shot that you would be elected, as the first woman judge.
JP: When I was working at the Government Operations Committee for Assemblyman Mel Zimmer, I was at a women’s bar convention and some of my women lawyer friends told me to run for family court judge. At the time, both judges were white men and Republicans. My friends said ‘you’ll never win but you can help raise the public’s awareness about family-related concerns.’ I told Mel ‘I’ll never win but it will be great experience.’ To everyone’s surprise, I won.
LW: How did you win?
JP: The other candidate was the retiring judge’s law clerk and he thought it was a shoe in. I went everywhere, to strawberry festivals, to the plumbers’ and electrical workers’ union meetings and told people what I wanted to do for the family court, how I wanted to improve efficiency and make the court more responsive [to the public], and they listened.
LW: What changes did you bring to the family court?
JP: We opened a children’s center, so that when parents, who were often emotional and angry, came into the courtroom, the children didn’t have to come into the court with them. They had a place to go and were attended by competent adults. I also instituted a program whereby children would get a book when they came into the courtroom. Often there’s a big candy dish, which I thought was inappropriate, so I invested in a number of books and gave one to each child. In some cases it was the first book the child had ever owned.
We also sat down with the Commissioners of Social Services and Mental Health and started the Pride Program, which provided intensive services for crack-addicted mothers. In the process [of being on the court], I adopted my son from India, which made me even more empathetic to the struggles of the families I interacted with.
LW: It must have been difficult working as a judge and bringing up a child singlehandedly.
JP: I parented and I worked. I had to give up social activities, but that was okay, because it was the commitment I made.
LW: How did you get elected to the Supreme Court of the Third Judicial District? Again, you were the first woman to do so.
JP: The Supreme Court judges are nominated at a convention convening in Albany. You have to have judicial delegates vote for you, and Albany had the most delegates. I didn’t have enough votes, so I had someone nominate me from the floor. I staged it—I was wearing a black jacket with bright turquoise lapels standing in the back of the room with a couple hundred people and the chair was very upset when I asked if I could be heard for a moment. He was afraid there would be ruckus, but instead I gave remarks withdrawing my name and talking about the need for party unity, how it was important everyone work together and that I was sure in the future all the delegates attending would see the need for diversity (I didn’t use that word). I said I wasn’t going to create chaos, but I wasn’t going away, and it worked because the next year a number of delegates remembered I had made a strong statement but didn’t create chaos.
When I was nominated and ran, I created a committee and had a lot of people help me out. My son was five and he handed out hot dog biscuits while I handed out literature. You have to take the risk and work it.
LW: You were then appointed to the appellate division by Mario Cuomo, hearing appeals from trial courts in 28 counties. What kinds of cases have you heard?
JP: Workers compensation, unemployment compensation, challenges to state agency regulations, a lot of criminal cases, from murder to robbery to rape, child custody, car accidents, medical malpractice, real property rights. One of the shifts we’ve seen is an increase in litigation concerning gender fairness. Also an expansion of the right to counsel at the arraignment, not just the trial. Upstate is a large geographical area and often people don’t have a lawyer at their arraignment. Recently there’s been a case to expand the right to counsel and funding for this representation.
LW: Five years ago, Andrew Cuomo appointed you presiding judge. What is the role of presiding judge?
JP: I am the person responsible for managing the appeals court, which now consists of 12 judges. I hear appeals from all 28 counties. When I became the presiding judge and began to sit on the Administrative Board, which sets policy for all the courts of the state, I raised concerns in areas where I felt we had to make a change. One concerns lawyer discipline—if you want to hire a doctor you can go on the Department of Health’s website and see if he or she has been disciplined. You could do that with lawyers, except you couldn’t find his or her name unless you knew what locality the person started his or her practice in, since each geographical department had its own website. We created a statewide database, so now when you search a name, you can easily find it.
LW: As presiding judge, what have your priorities been?
JP: I believe that courts should reflect their community and diversity so people will have confidence in the rule of law. I’ve tried very hard to make that belief a reality. One of the changes I made when I became Presiding Judge was that I made sure individuals who we hired at every level, from someone in the mailroom to a lawyer, were recruited fairly. I don’t hire close relatives ever and I made sure the final interview for every job is an interview I gave. Everyone understands whatever job they do is critical to our effort.
The second thing I did was to bring the cases to the people, by having simultaneous video casts, so that everybody who can get on a computer when we are in court can push a button and watch us hear a case.
LW: Since you’ve been appointed, has there been more diversity on the bench?
JP: For most of its history, only white men have served on the appellate division of the Third Department, but recently Governor Cuomo appointed Sharon Aarons, who is a person of color from the Bronx. I’m hoping there will be a lot more diversity soon.
LW: Do you think it’s fair that state judges should have to retire at age 70?
JP: What’s unfair is that while Supreme Court judges can request the opportunity to extend their tenure for three two-year terms, county court and family court judges can’t. The system is not equal, which has to do with the New York State constitution.
LW: In your case, you’re not seeking to extend your tenure.
JP: I think it’s time for me to leave so that someone new can take over.
LW: Any plans for your retirement?
JP: I would like the opportunity to teach. I’m headed to South Africa this summer, to teach at a judicial institute for judges from different countries in Africa. I love the arts and sit on the board of the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild and I’m a passionate potter.
LW: Which part of your legacy are you most proud of?
JP: I’m hoping that what I achieved is providing a road map for other people who want to move forward in their careers, even if they feel they don’t know anybody important and aren’t related to somebody powerful and even if their parents didn’t graduate from high school. I’m hoping they will say, ‘hey, look what she did. I can do that too.’ If people follow the path I’ve groomed, then I’ve achieved my goal.