How do judges of the New York Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Court of Appeals / Joined 1983 / Served to 2008

Judith Smith Kaye

Judge, New York Court of Appeals

Judith Smith Kaye was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1938 · age 88
Tenure: 1983–2008 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	New York Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Barnard College
Polytechnic Institute of New York University

Judicial Record

In our data, Kaye authored 512 published opinions for the court (1983–2008), plus 64 dissents and 30 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Danielson (13,222 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. 326 of these were attributed to Kaye 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
2007	People v. Danielson	880 N.E.2d 1	13,222
2006	People v. Lopez	844 N.E.2d 1145	5,909
2004	People v. Mateo	811 N.E.2d 1053	5,028
2008	People v. Hawkins†	11 N.Y.3d 484	2,384
2005	People v. Caban†	833 N.E.2d 213	1,975
1991	Society of Plastics Industry, Inc. v. County of Suffolk†	77 N.Y.2d 761	1,369
1990	W.W.W. Associates, Inc. v. Giancontieri†	77 N.Y.2d 157	1,330
2004	Nicholson v. Scoppetta	820 N.E.2d 840	1,038
1995	Oswego Laborers' Local 214 Pension Fund v. Marine Midland Bank, N. A.	647 N.E.2d 741	1,009
1984	Hallock v. State†	64 N.Y.2d 224	950
1990	People v. Chipp· Dissent†	75 N.Y.2d 327	936
1992	Liberman v. Gelstein†	80 N.Y.2d 429	838
1993	Howell v. New York Post Co.†	81 N.Y.2d 115	788
1986	Chimart Associates v. Paul†	66 N.Y.2d 570	784
2005	Pommells v. Perez†	830 N.E.2d 278	743

Showing the 15 most-cited of 606 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 Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Judith Smith Kaye on?: Judith Smith Kaye was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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