In case you missed it, open warfare has broken out amongst the New York judiciary.  Since this doesn’t happen too often, I feel obliged to take note.

Justice Emily Jane Goodman has gone public (yup, really public) with her reactions to Chief Judge Judith Kaye’s “top secret” missive to the judiciary about their inchoate pay raise in a piece at Judicial Reports.  Justice Goodman’s anger, frustration and sarcasm are palpable.  Nowhere in memory has the angst boiled over in such an open fashion.

The Chief Judge writes that she understands my “mounting frustration,” though I suspect she will find it unseemly when I, a New York State Supreme Court Justice, am forced into bankruptcy.

Forced into bankruptcy?  Well, that would be ugly.  Though the millions of New Yorkers who don’t make $136,700 will probably question certain financial and lifestyle choices should bankruptcy be the outcome.  If that pittance will force some poor judge into bankruptcy, imagine what a minimun wage income would do.  Still, that’s a shockingly harsh thing to say, especially to your Chief Judge.  But it gets worse:

I’m sure the Chief Judge believes that these contacts will do the trick. But, by the way, she and the other administrators have never been elected, have never run for office or been touched by politics, in a way that would enable them to understand politics and political negotiation. Those who are appointed are the beneficiaries of politics, without experiencing the dynamics themselves. Almost all court administrators (I can think of few exceptions) are appointed, and almost none have ever been elected to the Supreme Court.

Wow!  I could feel that slap all the way over here.  Now we’re getting personal.  The seething hostility between elected and appointed judges has never come to the surface like this before.  Who knew that there was this much resentment.

Justice Goodman concludes:

Of course, it is not really about the lawsuit; it’s about being pumped up and let down yet again.

It’s nice to know that judges really are human.  Maybe now they will remember how it feels for the rest of us, especially the defendants who walk in believing that there is a place where the rule of law prevails and the Constitution is alive.  Maybe they won’t be “let down yet again.”