The feeble defenses of the nomination of Hector LaSalle
By 
Kathy Hochul made a massive substantive and political blunder by nominating a judge with a conservative track record to New York’s highest appellate court. Doing this after the 4-3 conservative majority Hochul had the chance to finally flip almost single-handedly delivered the House of Representatives to the Republican Party is remarkable, but that’s the Andrew Cuomo wing of the New York Democratic Party for you.
What this faction does have is a lot of media connections, so they’ve been flooding the zone with arguments that will be familiar to anyone who’s followed the nomination of a Republican justice — discussing individual cases is “cherry picking,” discussing his record is “smearing,” he is just Following the Law, etc. etc. It’s all bullshit:
Unfortunately, Gov. Kathy Hochul nominated Justice Hector LaSalle of the Second Department of the Appellate Division to become the next Chief Judge. After reviewing Justice LaSalle’s record, unions, civil rights organizations, abortion rights groups, and community organizations urged the state Senate to reject the nomination. Since then, 14 Democratic senators have announced their opposition.
LaSalle’s supporters have, in turn, angrily flooded the op-ed pages. These pieces offer little evidence that LaSalle would break with the conservative bloc, while attacking critics for supposedly cherry-picking three particularly troubling cases to make LaSalle look bad, failing to give LaSalle “due process” and “politicizing” the confirmation process. Hochul has similarly echoed those themes.
LaSalle’s defenders insist his critics need to take a broader look at his record. But that broad review just confirms his opponents’ worst fears.
To pick just one of the many areas:
Last but not least is LaSalle’s record in civil rights and criminal cases. In People v. Bridgeforth, LaSalle refused to find that a prosecutor who discriminated against jurors on the basis of skin color had violated either the United States or New York Constitution. His decision was ultimately reversed by the Court of Appeals. In Matter of Tyler L., LaSalle joined a slim majority to find that a 15-year-old child with an IQ of 74 needed no special protection during interrogation, despite the only expert in the case concluding that the child’s Miranda waiver could not be knowing or voluntary. As the dissenting judges pointed out, the majority pointedly ignored the evidence that the child could only read at a fourth-grade level.
Also sadly familiar is the idea that judges should be judges not on their actual record but by whatever empty platitudes they say at their confirmation hearings:
Consider: every Republican Justice on the Supreme Court had a confirmation hearing in which they led *GOP Senators* to believe they would not overturn Roe v. Wade. And then they all voted to overturn Roe v. Wade! Was the hearing a good guide to their philosophy? (8/10)— Noah Rosenblum (@narosenblum) January 13, 2023
Here’s what we would learn if LaSalle is given a hearing: nothing. His votes and opinions and what matters, and this track record makes it clear that the Senate should reject the nomination.