School of Law Held Fourth Annual Joseph W. Bellacosa Distinguished Jurist-in-Residence Program

St. John’s School of Law held its Fourth Annual Bellacosa Distinguished Jurist-in-Residence program on Monday, October 5, 2009.  This year’s jurist was Honorable Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, Senior Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals.  

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Judge Ciparick spent the day at the Law School, meeting with three sections of first-year students, hearing case reports by teams of students from (respectively) the Child Advocacy Clinic, the Securities Arbitration Clinic, and the Elder Law Clinic, chatting informally with students from the Ron Brown Center and the Latin American Law Student Association, and dining with faculty at a luncheon and question-and-answer session.  At 4:00, Judge Ciparick offered her keynote address, A Perspective on Judicial Independence, in the Belson Moot Court Room for the entire law school community.  She was introduced by former Court of Appeals Judge and former Dean Joseph Bellacosa, and three of her colleagues on the Court of Appeals, Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, Judge Susan Read, and Judge Victoria Graffeo, travelled to St. John’s to join her for the event.

Judge Ciparick was born in New York City in 1942. She grew up in Washington Heights, graduated from Hunter College in 1963, and received her J.D. from St. John’s University School of Law in 1967.  She began as staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society in New York City in 1967, as Assistant Counsel for the Judicial Conference of the State of New York in 1969, as Chief Law Assistant of the New York City Criminal Court in 1972, and  as Counsel in the office of the New York City Administrative Judge in 1974.  In 1978, she was appointed Judge of the New York City Criminal Court, and in 1982 she was elected to the New York State Supreme Court. Governor Mario M. Cuomo appointed Judge Ciparick to the Court of Appeals in December, 1993, and Governor Eliot Spitzer reappointed her in November, 2007.

The Bellacosa Distinguished Jurist-in-Residence program was established by alumni and friends of Judge Joseph W. Bellacosa ’61, ’87HON, who served for fourteen years as an Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals before returning to St. John’s to serve as Dean of the School of Law from 2000 to 2004.  Prior Distinguished Jurists-in-Residence have included Hon. Dennis W. Archer (Justice, Michigan Supreme Court), Chief Justice Frank J. Williams (Chief Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court), and Hon. Judith S. Kaye (Retired Chief Judge of the State of New York).