{"id":254351,"date":"2026-06-03T22:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T22:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/254351\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T22:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T22:01:09","slug":"a-human-element-meet-the-justice-leading-manhattan-civil-supreme-court-who-talks-to-strangers-on-the-subway-and-pushed-for-social-workers-in-her-courtroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/254351\/","title":{"rendered":"A \u2018human element\u2019: Meet the justice leading Manhattan Civil Supreme Court who talks to strangers on the subway and pushed for social workers in her courtroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Helping people solve the problems they can\u2019t on their own is Manhattan Civil Supreme Court Administrative Justice Suzanne Adams<\/a>\u2019 favorite part of her job. It\u2019s a job she takes very seriously, she said, and doing it well requires \u201cbringing a human element\u201d to the bench.<\/p>\n

Adams said she brings that critical humanity to the judiciary by doing what she can to increase its diversity, educating herself and Manhattan\u2019s judges on the city\u2019s wide swath of cultures and letting everyday conversations she has with strangers on the subways and the youth she mentors inform the way she leads the court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always important for judges to be listening and learning because our responsibility is so great,\u201d Adams said. \u201cWhen people come to you and ask you to apply the law to their problem, that is an awesome responsibility. I take it as a serious, serious responsibility to be the person who\u2019s going to make a decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before rising to her current position overseeing Manhattan Civil Supreme Court as its administrative judge \u2014 a role she likened to that of a school principal \u2014 Adams served on the Manhattan Criminal Court bench and as a Manhattan Family Court judge before moving to the Manhattan Civil Supreme Court bench. <\/p>\n

At the Supreme Court, she primarily heard cases related to the city\u2019s transit system and the Adult Survivor Act, which temporarily removed the statute of limitations for sexual assault, allowing people to sue over abuse they otherwise wouldn\u2019t have been able to.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw how a good judge could change people\u2019s lives,\u201d said Adams, who was an attorney for about 20 years before being elected to the bench in 2017. \u201cThat\u2019s what propelled me to the judiciary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Justice Suzanne Adams follows in her father\u2019s footsteps<\/p>\n

The first time she saw what a good judge could do, she said, was when she was 14 years old and tagged along with her father, then Nassau County District Judge Thomas Adams<\/a>, to watch him preside over his courtroom one night.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018What a wonderful job, that he had the ability to help people solve problems they were unable to on their own,\u2019\u201d she said of watching her dad work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Justice Suzanne Adams stands with her father, Judge Thomas Adams (far right) alongside Hon. Dana Catanzaro, Hon. Adam Silvera, Hon. Joseph Zayas and Hon. Norman St. George at the Columbian Lawyers Rapallo Luncheon last week at the NY Athletic Club.Courtesy of Hon. Suzanne J. Adams \/ OCA<\/p>\n

As an attorney, Adams said it became incredibly clear to her the difference a good judge \u2013 one who listens, who\u2019s kind, who shows up prepared \u2013 could make. She spent just under 15 years at insurance defense firm Morris Duffy Alonso & Faley<\/a>, where she was a partner, before serving as a managing partner at McManus Ateshoglou Adams Aiello & Apostolakos<\/a>, a firm she helped found in 2015.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

After a few years practicing law, Adams, a Hofstra Law School graduate, realized she eventually wanted to devote her life to being \u201cthe kind of judge you wanted to appear before.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bringing the \u2018human element\u2019<\/p>\n

How to become that type of judge? Adams said it has a lot to do with bringing the \u201chuman element\u201d into court.<\/p>\n

One way she does this is by working to increase diversity on the bench and ensuring she and the other judges serving Manhattan\u2019s Supreme Civil Court are as educated as possible on the city\u2019s wide range of cultures. Adams said she encourages cultural and historical programming, like cooking and serving food from across the globe in the courthouse, hosting Black history talks and holding other informational events, lessons from which she encourages her judiciary to bring back to their courtrooms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI very much feel that our bench and government need to reflect the people it represents,\u201d said Adams, who calls the Upper East Side home. \u201cWhen you have a judiciary that mirrors the population it represents, it creates confidence. If there\u2019s no confidence in the judiciary, that\u2019s a big problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

To materially increase the bench\u2019s diversity, Adams mentors people from underrepresented backgrounds to help show them the path to the bench. She\u2019s a judicial mentor for both the Richard Failla LGBTQ Commission and the Franklin H. Williams Judicial Commission, which works to address issues facing and offer guidance to attorneys who are queer and come from underrepresented communities looking to become judges.<\/p>\n

In these roles and others, like as a mentor to law school, college and high school students and a member of roughly two dozen professional and bar associations, Adams also works to ensure fair and respectful treatment for all who enter or serve in the courts and to eliminate barriers to equity.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople need to have confidence in us [and] people need to feel the court system is doing everything it can to be fair,\u201d Adams said. \u201cMy dream would be to have a comment box [in the court] where people said, \u2018Win or lose, I feel like I can come back here and trust this.\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Adams sits at her desk in Manhattan Civil Supreme Court.Courtesy of Hon. Suzanne J. Adams \/ OCA<\/p>\n

Another way she makes the courts feel more human is by allowing her worldview to be infused by her everyday conversations, which she says have taught her that 1) Most people are good, and 2) Most people want to help each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019m on the subway, I\u2019ll talk to you. I think it\u2019s very important,\u201d Adams said. \u201cIt\u2019s important to be interacting with other people. Taking interest in other people\u2019s enthusiasm is the best way to learn, [and] learning about other people is a great thing for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s evident that her willingness to be impacted by those around her has allowed the court system to help more people.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

When she served as a judge in Manhattan Criminal Court, Adams said she immediately saw the need for social workers in the court. She was struck by people appearing before her with extreme mental illness, schizophrenia, improper attire, no shoes and severe physical health problems, like untreated, leaking, septic-looking wounds and swollen legs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized, I\u2019m not able to address some of these individuals\u2019 needs,\u201d Adams said. \u201cThe population we were serving needed significantly more wrap-around services than the court system could provide.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I saw was the need for mental health and social workers,\u201d she said, then added that, alongside her colleagues, she used her time on that bench to push for social workers to be placed in the court.<\/p>\n

When she worked as a Family Court judge, she heard cases involving 16- and 17-year-olds accused of crimes under the state\u2019s then-newly passed Raise the Age<\/a> law, which mandated that teenagers be tried as minors in Family Court, not adults in Criminal Court.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy goal in the Raise the Age part was to give young people the tools to turn their ship around,\u201d Adams said, adding that her work on that bench centered around rehabilitation justice for young people. \u201c[The court] gave me the resources, programs, and social workers necessary to turn their ship around.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to do that for the good of society because if we don\u2019t, where are we headed?\u201d Adams said. She said she was chosen to work on Raise the Age cases because of her \u201cholistic approach\u201d to bail and courtroom proceedings generally.<\/p>\n

As an attorney, she spent six years working pro bono in the Eviction Intervention Services Clinic, offering free legal advice to people facing eviction and other housing-related issues, like those who needed to take their landlords to court over bug infestations or structural issues in their apartments, such as severe leaks or crumbling ceilings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There, she said, she learned the importance of hearing people out, no matter how long it took.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people are dealing with [these issues], it\u2019s all-consuming,\u201d Adams said. \u201cYou need to let them get out their whole story.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Now, when she hears a case, she said the most important thing to her is ensuring everyone feels that they\u2019re heard and that the resolution that\u2019s reached feels fair.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the end of a proceeding, Adams said she always asks, \u201cIs there anything else you\u2019d like to say to me?\u201d She said she\u2019ll frequently tell people in her courtroom, \u201cYou might not win, you might not lose, but we\u2019re going to resolve this today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being a resource to the city\u2019s civil judiciary, managing the courthouse\u2019s operations and judges\u2019 caseloads and schedules \u2013 while still hearing cases herself \u2013 as Manhattan\u2019s administrative judge allows her to have the impact she\u2019s always wanted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is, by far, the greatest job I\u2019ve ever had in my life,\u201d Adams said. \u201cIt\u2019s been the great honor of my life to work here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Helping people solve the problems they can\u2019t on their own is Manhattan Civil Supreme Court Administrative Justice Suzanne…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[99127,1106,2710,75,99128,84,83,9,24,63,20090],"class_list":["post-254351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-administrative-judge-suzanne-adams","tag-features","tag-law","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-civil-supreme-court","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-profiles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}