In New York there is no official judicial directory. If you end up in court, and you know the name of your judge, the only way you can find out anything is to ask friends, acquaintances, whoever you come into contact with. Of course you can go to the Board of Elections and look up your judge's election campaign funders, where he/she lives, and on what ticket he/she ran for the judiciary (democrat, republican, independent), but the relevant information about previous decisions, outlook on important issues...forget it.

Who's Who on the Bench? Who Can Tell
By JOYCE PURNICK, NY TIMES, May 17, 2004

LET'S say you read about an interesting court decision and want some insights into the judge who wrote it. Or maybe you are trying to learn about candidates running for the bench.

The likelihood is you won't get what you want unless you are very patient, have a researcher on your payroll or have developed unusually sophisticated computer skills. Because in New York, judges, citing security concerns, have thwarted government efforts to give the public fundamental insights into who they are.

In New York, there is no official judicial directory. No Web site with background on judges, as there is for state legislators. It is hit or miss - bits of information from newspaper articles, from bar association files, from unofficial professional directories that profile some judges but not others, depending on information often provided by the jurists themselves.

The situation around the country is uneven, but many states at least provide public information on the backgrounds of their higher court judges. Impressed by what he saw in other states, E. Leo Milonas, when he was chief administrative judge, tried to put together a judicial directory. That was about 10 years ago. Never happened.

The Association of Justices of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, sort of a union, objected. "The Supreme Court judges went ballistic when I tried to do this, because of security reasons," Judge Milonas said on Friday. "So what happened? We couldn't get it started. The judges refused to cooperate."

A professor of law at the City University of New York, Steven Zeidman, said he struggled to update a comparative study of elected and appointed city judges a few years ago when he was executive director of the Fund for Modern Courts.

"To find out things like educational background and prior experience, you have to search the Internet, go through back issues of The New York Law Journal," Mr. Zeidman said. "Things are out there, but not compiled in a readily available, accessible place. With so many judges being elected, you would think this should be readily available."

Efforts to discern the current position of the Supreme Court association were unavailing because its president, Justice David Demarest of St. Lawrence County, was on vacation last week and no other officer would comment.

ONE Supreme Court justice, who would speak only if assured anonymity, said the public could learn enough about judges from the city's official Green Book. It lists only the names of city judges, the expiration date of their terms and the names of their law secretaries or court attorneys. "What other information would you need?" asked the judge. "What if someone sitting in prison gets his hands on a computer and does some research?"

The same could be said of the federal judiciary. But with the click of a mouse, anyone can find extensive background information on federal judges past and present from the Federal Judicial Center, the federal judiciary's research and education agency. Check it out: www.fjc.gov.

Why should the public want to know more than a judge's name? Consider Judge Marilyn L. O'Connor of Family Court in Rochester. In a controversial decision made public recently, she directed a couple not to procreate again until they could care for the children they already have - four in foster care.

Who was this judge? Critics speculated that she had to be ideologically conservative. A call to her chambers went unanswered. But information gleaned from phone interviews, newspaper articles and research by the Fund for Modern Courts - sources not readily accessible to the public - painted an unexpected profile.

Judge O'Connor, 67, the mother of four and very active in the Women's Bar Association, is a former public defender and elementary school teacher, elected to the bench in 2000 on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines. Whatever motivated her, it does not appear to have been a classic conservative ideology.

Such biographical information should be available to the public, agreed Jonathan Lippman, the current chief administrative judge. His office's communications department sometimes, on request, profiles judges, but not consistently, noting that judges do not work for the Office of Court Administration.

They don't. They work for the public. Judge Lippman wants to revive the idea of a judicial directory. "I don't think we will have any problem today in putting that kind of information together,'' he said.

Could be. Then again, Judge Lippman is known for his optimism.