STILL THE CHIEF
Chief Judge Judith Kaye can chalk up a lot of firsts, now including the longest tenure as the head of New York’s judicial system. The first woman on the Court of Appeals, Kaye was reappointed yesterday by Governor Eliot Spitzer. The governor officially considered seven candidates, but the table was already set for Kaye. “With all deference to the others on the list, who are stupendous lawyers and wonderful members of the bar, this was, I have to say, an easy decision,” Spitzer said, referring to the chief judge as his “great friend.” Kaye, however, will serve less than two years of her 14-year term before facing the mandatory retirement age. The New York Law Journal notes there is no “heir apparent,” although Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge James Yates, and Appellate Division, Second Department Judge Steven Fisher are all considered likely contenders. For the time being, Kaye’s agenda includes judicial pay hikes, consolidation of the trial courts, a focus on children in the court system, improvements to indigent defense, and reform of the town and village courts.

 
DOMAIN POINTS
Luxury condos are going to benefit the public how? Questions posed by a federal judge yesterday in a hearing about the proposed massive redevelopment of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards were tinged with doubt. The New York Sun says federal magistrate Judge Robert Levy probed both sides thoroughly. At issue is whether the use of eminent domain to build the 22-acre complex is legal. The opponents have been whittled down to three homeowners, several renters, and a business owner whose properties face seizure under the plan. The 10 named plaintiffs are suing the developer, Forest City Ratner, as well as Mayor Bloomberg and ex-Governor Pataki, who support the project. The defendants asked Levy to dismiss the lawsuit, on the grounds that the public benefits are “obvious.”

 
BLOOMBERG, LONE GUNSLINGER
Federal prosecutors do not have Mayor Bloomberg’s back on this one. The government says it will not file criminal charges against any of the out-of-state gun dealers Bloomberg wanted to bring down for selling guns illegally. The city announced last May its first civil lawsuit against gun dealers, but the federal government now says the stings that produced the suits step into the jurisdiction of federal agents and face “potential legal liabilities,” the Daily News reports. The city sent private investigators to make illegal “straw purchases.” The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and various U.S. attorneys’ offices said the city’s findings against the gun dealers “do not rise to a level that would support criminal prosecution,” in a letter sent this week to City Hall by Michael Battle, director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys at the Department of Justice. Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s office said it wouldn’t’ “necessarily” stop conducting the stings.

 
OF RECUSALS AND REMUNERATIONS
A handful of judges are recusing themselves from cases that involve legislator-lawyers. And they're making their reasons public. Usually judges keep the stories behind recusals to themselves, but a group of New York state judges who have sued the legislature for pay raises say they can’t hear cases in which the lawyers are legislators or belong to firms for which legislators work. The New York Times points out that legal experts aren’t sure whether the recusals are required. One thing the recusals might do: increase the profile of the judges’ plea for pay hikes. Another thing it has already done: deepened antagonism between legislators, who are paid nearly $80,000 for their part time work, and judges, who make about $137,000. “I don’t think it makes any sense,” said state Senator John DeFrancisco about the recusals, who is chairman of the judiciary committee and had sponsored legislation for judicial raises. But Nassau County Supreme Court Judge Joseph DeMaro, who is part of group suing the legislators for not acting on the long-overdue raises, says the judges are in a “management-labor position” with the legislators.