How do judges of the New York Appellate Division reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Appellate Division / Joined 1975 / Served to 1982

Harold Birns

Justice, New York Appellate Division

Harold Birns was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division, who joined the court in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1914–1982
Tenure: 1975–1982 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1975	New York Appellate Division	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Birns authored 44 published opinions for the court (1976–1982), plus 15 dissents and 10 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Brown (41 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 68 of these were attributed to Birns by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1978	People v. Brown†	62 A.D.2d 715	41
1980	Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. v. Ross†	75 A.D.2d 373	34
1977	People v. France†	57 A.D.2d 432	32
1976	In re the Estate of Sunshine†	51 A.D.2d 326	30
1980	People v. Garcia†	72 A.D.2d 356	29
1976	In re the Accounting of the Bank of New York†	53 A.D.2d 55	28
1977	People v. Cwikla†	60 A.D.2d 40	27
1982	Video Corp. of America v. Frederick Flatto Associates, Inc.†	85 A.D.2d 448	26
1977	People v. Rivera· Concurrence†	58 A.D.2d 147	23
1979	Porter v. Wertz†	68 A.D.2d 141	21
1981	Holy Spirit Ass'n for the Unification of World Christianity v. Tax Commission†	81 A.D.2d 64	19
1979	People v. Parker· Dissent†	70 A.D.2d 387	19
1980	Brennan v. New York City Housing Authority· Concurrence†	72 A.D.2d 410	18
1977	Hyman v. Hyman†	56 A.D.2d 337	17
1976	Bal v. Murphy· Concurrence†	55 A.D.2d 26	17

Showing the 15 most-cited of 69 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the New York Appellate Division reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Harold Birns on?: Harold Birns was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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7 years on the New York Appellate Division. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).