D&I Changemaker:
Chief Judge Rowan D. Wilson
By John Caher
Senior Advisor for Strategic/Technical Communications
When pressed to reveal the single most important thing that judicial and non-judicial staff should know about their new leader, Chief Judge Rowan D. Wilson didn’t hesitate for a second before responding: “That I care about them.”
Chief Judge Wilson learned early on the importance of empathy, and the personal fulfillment that comes from helping others: His mother was totally blind, and her oldest child — Rowan Dudley Wilson – patiently read to her from books, magazines, texts and soup cans. He also observed others with disabilities, including a woman with no arms who would sometimes read his mother’s coursework to her, turning the pages of the book with her feet.
“You get great enjoyment out of helping people,” said Chief Judge Wilson in a recent Diversity Dialogues interview. “Having been brought up in circumstances where that was my job really, things like that kind of came naturally to me.”
A native of California, the Chief Judge has a bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a law degree from Harvard Law School. He clerked for a federal appellate court judge, and spent most of his pre-judicial career practicing securities, intellectual property, contract and antitrust law with the Manhattan firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He was the first-ever partner of color at Cravath, a firm that dates to 1819. Judge Wilson was appointed to the Court of Appeals as an Associate Judge in 2017, and on April 19 of this year, assumed the center seat reserved for the Chief Judge.
The Chief Judge acknowledged that both he and Chief Administrative Judge Joseph Zayas face a steep learning curve in administering a court system as large and complex as New York’s. He embraces more of a bottom-up than a top-down management style.
“Judge Zayas and I think that we're better off working from the bottom up and finding out place-by-place what's working well, what isn't working, why isn't it working, what is it you think you need to make it work better, and tailoring the solutions on a more local basis,” he said.
At the Court of Appeals, Chief Judge Wilson believes the high court should hear more cases, and he thinks the way to do that is to encourage the Appellate Division departments to “grant leave” or refer cases to Albany.
Chief Judge Wilson presides over the most diverse Court in state history with two Black judges, two Latinx judges, one openly gay judge, the first Greek ever to serve on the court, and four women, giving women a 4-3 majority.
“Diversity matters because we're trying to arrive at the best communal decision we can,” the Chief Judge said. “It's a diversity of all kinds of experiences. It's good to have those different perspectives. I think that the most important thing is to set the right tone and to emphasize that we need to value each other for who we are.”
To hear the full interview with Chief Judge Wilson go to:
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