It’s a whole new set of jobs that the mayor controls.
“The goal is to appoint judges who are qualified, who will be impartial, and who understand the experiences of New Yorkers who will appear in these courts,” said Ramzi Kassem, the mayor’s chief counsel.
Kassem, who is Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top lawyer, sat down for an exclusive interview with NY1, committing to how the administration will pick judges.
While political parties and voters get to select hundreds of judges for the bench in state Supreme Court or Civil Court, the mayor gets to select his own judges unilaterally for the city’s Criminal and Family Court.
“The mayor by law possesses the ultimate authority to appoint judges to the bench, that’s family court judges, criminal court judges in New York City and even some civil court judges on an interim basis,” Kassem said.
Following through on an under-the-radar part of his job, Mamdani is already starting to shake things up. In January, immediately upon taking office, the mayor declined to reappoint three judges to the bench, with little explanation given. The former judges did not comment on the story.
A source close to one of them told NY1 that the process under Mamdani appeared to favor defense attorneys over those with prosecutorial backgrounds for the bench.
“The idea that the mayor may depart from a recommendation in either direction, either to appoint someone or to decide to appoint them or not appoint them that’s not unprecedented,” his chief counsel said. “That is the mayor’s power by law.”
Some sources have noted that one of the judges, Karen Cortes of Bronx Family Court, had a decision regarding an expedited hearing reversed on appeal after several young children were removed from a Bronx household. Others have said she was a popular jurist.
That decision, among others, has created a wave of criticism from those familiar with the process.
“First time in my mind this has happened, and I have been around a long time. I am 77 years old,” said John Leventhal, who served as a state Supreme Court justice and on the appellate division for 13 years.
He is no longer on the bench but was serving on Mayor Eric Adams’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary, a group that vets and recommends judicial candidates to the mayor.
Leventhal was not reappointed earlier this year by Mamdani, despite his selection by the state’s top judge.
“I don’t hold it against anyone; the mayor’s counsel representing an Al-Qaeda terrorist who participated in 9/11,” Leventhal said. “I don’t hold it against someone if the mayor approved for his committee who were convicted of murdering two police officers. But to single me out and say you cannot be on the committee because you represented a controversial, despised person like Ghislaine Maxwell is hypocritical, is a pretext, and I believe smacks of antisemitism.”
Kassem responded: “I want to be clear about this. Judge Leventhal is an eminently qualified jurist. Ms. Maxwell is entitled to legal representation. Judge Leventhal is entitled to represent her. But this administration decided it was more prudent to ensure that members of the committee did not have any financial ties to associates of Mr. Epstein. The difference between Judge Leventhal’s representation of Ms. Maxwell is he was collecting legal fees, and my work on behalf of a number of incarcerated individuals has always been on a pro bono basis.”
Leventhal and others, including Jewish bar associations, have claimed antisemitism. When Mamdani appointed his full advisory committee on the judiciary this summer, there were no Jewish members.
“It’s a difference without a distinction,” Leventhal said.
NY1 asked: “Are you Jewish?”
“Yes. I am a proud Jew,” he responded.
“Do you think you are being singled out because you’re Jewish?” NY1 asked.
“There is no other reason,” he said. “I laid out for you who they represented and who I represented. That was okay, but I am not okay.”
Mamdani has said any suggestion that the composition of the advisory committee is motivated by religion is false.
“Mayor Mamdani has already appointed or reappointed 12 judges — a third of whom, four out of 12, happen to be Jewish identifying judges,” Kassem said. “So far, the important indicator to keep in mind is the judges.”
The mayor said his judicial appointments will reflect the city’s population.
“In those appointments and reappointment there have been Jewish judges, and that will continue as the mere fact that that is a reflection of what the city looks like,” Mamdani said earlier this summer.
The dozen appointments or reappointments made thus far were in January. He has not made any since. More are expected this fall.
Earlier this summer, the executive director of the mayor’s committee on the judiciary, who had worked for Adams before, resigned. And in her resignation letter, she expounded on the benefits of an independent committee — one that has “built-in checks that prevent corruption, cronyism and politics” — which was widely interpreted as a warning. Ayanna Sorett did not return a request for comment from NY1.
There has been some criticism of the chair of the new committee — Ali Najmi — a longtime lawyer with deep connections to Queens politics who has multiple cases against the city.
“The chair for the duration of his or her tenure cannot take cases, where in Mr. Najmi’s case, he will be appearing in family court or criminal court,” the chief counsel said. “So, he will no longer be appearing in those courts.”
The mayor’s top lawyer said there will be no political litmus tests for judges. They have implemented a new code of conduct, stating that the committee’s recommendations should be merit-based and that they must abide by conflicts of interest rules.
“The proof will be in the pudding,” Kassem said. “I think the public and the press will be able to see the judges that we are appointing to the bench and how they differ from or resemble past judges. I don’t expect it will be qualitatively, radically different thing from what we see in the past, but I do think we will have better representation from different sectors from the legal profession on the bench.”