Queens Courts celebrates the Year of the Snake

Justice Lillian Wan speaks during the 2025 Lunar New Year celebration and shares her story of becoming a judge while members of the Queens Supreme Court look on. Eagle photo by Noah Powelson

By Noah Powelson

Queens’ legal community gathered this week in a courtroom decorated in red to celebrate the 2025 Lunar New Year, and reflect on how much the Queens courts have changed over the decades.

Roughly 200 lawyers, judges and elected officials from across the World’s Borough packed themselves into the Queens Criminal Courthouse on Thursday, to hear from accomplished leaders of Queens’ Asian American legal community.

Organized by the Equal Justice Committee of Queens Supreme Court, Criminal Term, the event is one of many the organization hosts throughout the year to highlight the court’s diversity and facilitate conversations of how representation in the courts can improve.

“Representation matters. Representation matters in the legislation branch, it matters in the executive and it most certainly matters in the judiciary branch,” New York State Senator John Liu said. “Looking at our bench today, it’s a lot different than 20 years ago…I’m just so proud that here in Queens County, I dare say we have the most diverse bench.”

The keynote speaker for the afternoon was Judge Lillian Wan, the first Asian American woman to ever be appointed to the Appellate Division in New York State. A child of Chinese immigrants raised in Long Island, Wan said she struggled to get to the bench because of the lack of representation.

“My early life was a battle between trying to blend and my inevitable failure,” Wan said. “I just wanted to look like everyone else…I wanted people to be surprised that I spoke a little Chinese not, as they more often told me, that I spoke English so well. I wanted to conform to the role models I saw, and at that time, there were not too many Asian American role models.”

Wan said that struggle continued into her adulthood as she pursued an education and career in law. She was mistaken for her other Asian colleagues constantly in her first years as an attorney, and never felt she had a chance of becoming a judge one day herself. But it wasn’t until she met another trailblazing judge, the first Latina woman elected to the Civil Court, Margarita López Torres, that she was encouraged to apply for a judge position in Family Court.

Wan eventually became a trailblazer in her own right.

She said she wouldn’t be in the position she’s in now if it wasn’t for the work of countless others such as Judge Randall Eng, the first Asian American elected to the Supreme Court in New York State, to bring representation to the bench and convince people like her it was possible.

“I stand on the shoulders of many who came before me, and I now hope to lend my shoulders to the next generation of judges,” Wan said.