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 1975 / Served to 1984

Lawrence Henry Cooke

Judge, New York Court of Appeals

Lawrence Henry Cooke was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1914–2000
Tenure: 1975–1984 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1975	New York Court of Appeals	–	–
1979	New York Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Georgetown University
Albany Law School

Judicial Record

In our data, Cooke authored 263 published opinions for the court (1975–1984), plus 103 dissents and 31 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Crimmins (6,387 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. 395 of these were attributed to Cooke 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
1975	People v. Crimmins· Concurrence†	36 N.Y.2d 230	6,387
1978	300 Gramatan Avenue Associates v. State Division of Human Rights†	45 N.Y.2d 176	2,598
1980	Hearst Corp. v. Clyne· Dissent†	50 N.Y.2d 707	1,757
1977	Guggenheimer v. Ginzburg†	43 N.Y.2d 268	1,612
1980	Derdiarian v. Felix Contracting Corp.†	51 N.Y.2d 308	1,409
1976	Basso v. Miller†	40 N.Y.2d 233	1,277
1977	People v. Case†	42 N.Y.2d 98	1,186
1981	People v. Farrar†	52 N.Y.2d 302	1,012
1981	Akins v. Glens Falls City School District· Dissent†	53 N.Y.2d 325	822
1982	People v. Malloy†	55 N.Y.2d 296	685
1979	Auerbach v. Bennett· Dissent†	47 N.Y.2d 619	638
1978	Breed v. Insurance Co. of North America†	46 N.Y.2d 351	632
1984	In re Sheila G.†	61 N.Y.2d 368	590
1980	Robinson v. Reed-Prentice Division of Package Machinery Co.†	49 N.Y.2d 471	586
1981	People v. Tucker†	55 N.Y.2d 1	550

Showing the 15 most-cited of 397 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 Lawrence Henry Cooke on?: Lawrence Henry Cooke 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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9 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).