Wilson celebrates first Law Day as chief judge

Chief Judge Rowan Wilson gave remarks at the annual Law Day celebration at the Court of Appeals on Monday, May 1, 2023. File AP photo by Hans Pennink

By Jacob Kaye

Civics, civility and collaboration – according to the New York State Bar Association, those are the “cornerstones of democracy,” and were the values celebrated across the state during Law Day on Monday.

But newly-sworn-in Chief Judge Rowan Wilson dissents.

Wilson made one of his first public appearances since starting as the state’s newest top judge last month during the annual Law Day celebration held at the Court of Appeals courthouse on Monday, May 1. The event, which each year celebrates the rule of law in the U.S., also featured remarks from Attorney General Letitia James, acting Chief Administrative Judge Tamiko Amaker and New York State Bar Association President Sherry Levin Wallach. The event also included a brief awards ceremony, as is tradition, in which non-judicial court employees were honored for their service to the courts.

In giving his remarks on Tuesday, Wilson, who said he’s given a number of Law Day speeches throughout his career, said that he took issue with this year’s theme. While civics, civility and collaboration are all desired qualities, he said, not all three are required to make democracy in the United States work.

“I have no quarrel with civics as a cornerstone of our democracy – it plainly is – but civility and collaboration are not,” Wilson said. “They're great and we surely could use more of both, but they're not cornerstones of our democracy, neither in theory, nor in practice.”

“Now, before you go around, saying the chief judge thinks civics, civility and collaboration are hogwash – let me explain,” he added.

He started with civility. The chief judge ran down a list of insults and slander slung by and against some of the country’s earliest, and most storied, presidents, noting that civility was rarely valued by the country’s founding fathers.

“Putting aside the Vice President [Aaron] Burr felt sufficiently insulted by Alexander Hamilton to kill him in a duel, during the 1828 election between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, charges of bigamy and adultery were leveled against Jackson,” Wilson said. “He was also called a murderer and his mother a prostitute, while the Jackson campaign fired back by accusing Adams of pimping an American girl to the tsar.”

“That pervasive incivility was not unanticipated,” the chief judge added. “It was embedded in the political philosophy on which our nation was based.”

As for collaboration, Wilson took issue there, as well.

“The founders' concern with factions animated by extreme passion, evidences their belief that collaboration was an evil to be guarded against,” Wilson said. “An elaborate system of checks and balances was designed through a series of breaks to work against collaboration that might precipitously lead us into ruin.”

Despite his disagreement over the inclusion of civility and collaboration in the theme, Wilson noted that he believes civics is not only the cornerstone of democracy, but perhaps the most important ingredient. It’s also the one most sorely needed today, he said.

“It has been eroding over time,” Wilson said. “There's no doubt that we're at a crisis of civic education. The framers knew that the consequence of constitutional ignorance and being guided by passion rather than reason was our demise. Well, we just saw they were right about that.”

Wilson noted that in the decade leading up to their deaths, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who were for years uncivil with each other and rarely collaborated, wrote hundreds of letters to one another.

“That sense of commitment, involvement and responsibility is the true cornerstone of our democracy, and where our efforts should be directed,” Wilson said.

But in response to Wilson’s dissent, was the majority opinion – delivered by James.

“It is often felt as though we have lost sight of the civility and collaboration that are essential to a strong and functioning society,” James said. “It sometimes feels as though we've been hijacked by partisan politics, no longer guided by the common good.”

“That was the intention of a country with three separate branches and with a judicial branch to serve as a check on unrestrained power,” she added. The comment was, at first, followed by applause from Hector LaSalle, the presiding justice of the Appellate Division, Second Department who became the first chief judge nominee to be rejected by the State Senate earlier this year.

Toward the end of James’ speech, she noted that despite his opposition to the theme, Wilson, in his new role, exhibits all three of the “cornerstones of democracy.”

“We need judicial leaders who are consensus builders, and will be guardians of justice and civility,” the attorney general said. “And I believe Chief Justice Wilson is the right person to navigate us through these uncharted waters.”