When Dianne Renwick took over as presiding justice of the Appellate Division, First Department, she took on one of the most important judicial positions in the state. She presided over a court that in 2023 disposed of more than 4,700 appeals and more than 5,000 motions, and swore in more than 2,700 new attorneys to the bar.
In addition to keeping the court running at full pace, Renwick, 64, said she has been reflecting on the need to create opportunities to diversify the state’s courts.
The First Department, which has jurisdiction over appeals from trial courts in the Bronx and Manhattan, plays a pioneering national role due to the variety and novelty of the legal issues that come to the court.
“This court is one of the premier courts in the country,” Renwick said. “They look to this department because it’s in New York. New York is the cultural capital and the financial capital of the world.”
The First Department has cultivated an especially notable reputation for its business law decisions. The first Commercial Division was launched on an experimental basis in Manhattan 1993 and expanded throughout the state in 1995. But as the commercial and corporate center of the state, the First Department often rules on high-profile business disputes that range from labor issues to real estate development to mergers, contracts and other areas.
When Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Renwick presiding justice in 2023, she became the first woman of color to lead the court. As the appellate division’s steward, Renwick said she values excellence, respect and representation. She said she considers it her duty to grant a voice to all of those generations of people who were not able to serve on the court by holding it to the highest possible standard.
“I feel a great responsibility to, it sounds cliche, but to make them proud,” she said.
Renwick has moved to broaden access since taking on the role of associate justice on the First Department bench in 2008. As chair of the Anti-bias Committee, for example, she led an effort to install a female sculpture to the uniformly male figures that line the courthouse roof.
A top-line accomplishment in her first year as presiding justice was establishment of the Justice Forward initiative, a program that brings New York City school kids into the courts to help them understand the importance of civics and the role of the courts in their own lives. In September, she made another imprint on the court when she replaced the nameplate of the U.S. Supreme Court Judge and author of the Dredd Scott decision, Roger Taney, in the courtroom’s ornate stained-glass dome with that of Constance Baker Motley, a civil rights hero who became the first Black woman appointed to the federal bench in 1966.
Insistence on Professionalism
As presiding justice, Renwick reviews the decisions that the court renders in the appellate process, and she sits on a number of committees that play a key role in court operations. Among those under her jurisdiction are the Attorney Grievance Committee, which handles complaints against attorneys; the Character and Fitness Committee, which reviews applications for admission to the bar; and the Assigned Counsel Plan, which appoints attorneys to handle indigent defendants in criminal cases and attorneys for children in Family Court.
The 21 justices appointed by the governor to The First Department bench sit in four-judge panels to hear appeals. The court switched from five-judge panels in 2019 due to an increase in volume of cases and no increase in the number of judges. As each panel modifies or clarifies a lower court’s judgment or order, Renwick requires that each decision be well written, and thoroughly researched and thought through.
She expects the same level of professionalism from lawyers who come before the court. Her advice to attorneys: know your facts.
“People like to say it’s a hot bench. What does that mean? It means that the court knows the facts of the cases. And so, we usually jump right to it,” Renwick said.
Renwick’s commitment to excellence came out of her upbringing in the Bronx. Her parents were both immigrants from Grenada who, though not formally educated, understood the importance of education. Her father, who was a union carpenter and her mother, a seamstress, were some of the first people of color to move into the neighborhood of Williamsbridge in the northeast Bronx, effectively integrating it.
“They were people who weren’t afraid. They were very sure of themselves,” Renwick said.
Broad Perspective Gained From Experience
Growing up in the Civil Rights era, Renwick recalls being impacted by her parents’ horror at the news coverage of the Jim Crow south. During her undergraduate education at Cornell University, Renwick got involved in the anti-apartheid movement, and later at the Cardozo School of Law where she graduated in 1986, she took an interest in criminal justice working with attorney Barry Scheck, who went on to start the Innocence Project. She began her legal career as a staff attorney for the Bronx office of the Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Defense Division before joining the Federal Defenders where she represented criminal defendants before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
“That’s informed my perspective on the bench because you have to really respect people and appreciate where they’re coming from,” Renwick said. “No matter what they’ve done and how bad it is, you have to sit across from them and give them that respect.”
Renwick joined the bench as a housing court judge in 1997 before the city’s right to counsel law was passed. Back then, judges had a great level of responsibility to ensure that defendants actually understood their legal rights, she said. “It was a docket that was heavy and constantly moving,” she said. “If you are just not hearing what they’re saying, to be able to ask them another question there, they would just be trampled at that time.”
Creating Opportunities
Renwick remains keenly aware of the historical absence of women and people of color from the New York state judiciary. But demographic changes in the court proceed in phases, Renwick pointed out.
Betty Weinberg Ellerin was the first woman appointed to the court in 1985 and named presiding justice in 1999. Though only 22 of 140 justices in the court’s history have been women, by 2024 women became a majority of the 21 justices on the First Department bench.
For Renwick, education is the force that must be deployed to diversify the court system.
“What’s so important to me is ensuring that there’s a pipeline. Right now when we admit attorneys, there are hardly any black men attorneys, hardly any black women — people of color,” she said.
To this end, the Justice Forward initiative is aimed at exposing students in grades 6 through 12 from schools in Bronx and Manhattan to career opportunities that intersect with the judiciary and legal profession. First Department Justice Bahaati Pitt-Burke, who succeeded Renwick as the chair of the Anti-bias Committee, is leading the initiative, which brings students into the courthouse to meet judges, listen to oral arguments and discuss cases.
Renwick said her goal is to produce a group of students who in the future will say, “ I went to that program. I went to it year after year, or I came to the court on those days and I heard from these judges, and I learned how important it would be if I became a lawyer.’”
