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5. Speaking Truth to Power: A View from the Bench of Judge Jane Bolin
- University of Illinois Press
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5. SpeakingTruth to Power AView from the Bench of Judge Jane Bolin In the Family Court of the State of NewYork and its predecessor courts Judge Bolin presided over the complex and delicate family court matters such as juvenile homicides, nonsupport of wives and children, battered spouses, neglected and abandoned children, adoptions, and paternity suits from every racial and ethnic group of every socioeconomic strata. She imparted and fought for justice with equal vigor,and in so doing,made an indelible impact on the law and on the lives of many NewYorkers.1 Committed to making the law an instrument of fairness, her reformist zeal excited her judicial colleagues who joined in her crusade for change.Never settling into the“timid inertia”of the bench,Judge Bolin used the authority of her position to challenge injustice in the courts and in the broader community the courts represented. When Bolin first came to the Domestic Relations Court, racial and religious segregation was widespread among the probation staff, in the children’s institutions ,and in the social agencies.In addition,“One could count on one’s fingers,” she recalled, “the number of minorities on our staff—with me the lone one on our bench.”2 When law assistants were first being assigned to family court judges, Judge Bolin began asking “Where are the black law assistants?” Black judges made up a tiny minority in the Domestic Relations Court—or any court for that matter—and accordingly so were black law assistants went the explanation.But Bolin rejected that explanation as an acceptable standard, and before long there were black law assistants. She could not single-handedly remedy the meager representation of black judges, but she could and did effect positive change in the representation of black law assistants.3 With the aid of judicial colleagues HubertT. Delany and JustineWise Polier, she also campaigned to secure racial equity in the court and in its supporting institutions.4 Among Bolin’s many victories were two that radically changed the fabric and function of the Family Court of the State of NewYork and its predecessor courts. One involved the assignment of probation officers to cases without regard to race or religion;the other involved private child care agencies accepting children without regard to ethnic background. Probation officers were often seen as a juvenile court judge’s“right-hand man.”As one of the several nineteenth-century developments incorporated into the juvenile court movement,probation embodied the ideal of individualized, rehabilitative diagnosis and treatment. Probation officers assigned to the juvenile courts served not only as investigators to the juvenile’s social history, they also served as liaisons between the judges and the social scientists who guided them.5 The Department of Probation was therefore central to adjudication in the Family Court. Bolin had been on the bench only a short time when she discovered that administrative judge JohnWarren Hill routinely assigned cases ofAfricanAmerican children toAfricanAmerican probation officers, and the cases of white children to white probation officers. (She learned further that there were no more than two African American probation officers.)6 This practice was facilitated by the disclosure on court petitions of the children’s race and religion. Shocked by the court’s complicity in segregation, Bolin approached Judge Hill. “Well, I was so upset by it that, when I went on the bench,” she said, “I went to the presiding justice, as he was called then, and complained, and said that this was not right.” She reminded Hill that as public servants, probation officers should not be assigned cases by race.As she remembered, Hill was very annoyed with her, and said there was nothing that he could—or as she put it—“would do about it.”As a last resort,she enlisted the assistance of a friend,another lawyer,who threatened the administrative judge with a lawsuit should the practice continue.The threat of court action was sufficient to nudge Hill to discontinue requiring racial and religious disclosures on court petitions.7 Similar segregation existed in the larger court system.Local white judges never assigned black lawyers to represent indigent white defendants. In 1936 Horace Gordon, anAfricanAmerican lawyer who practiced in Harlem, complained that local white judges assigned white attorneys to defend blacks as well as whites who were without aid of counsel even when“there are five or more experienced, able and capable Negro attorneys present. . . . [yet] not one of them is asked.”8 It was not until 1940 in a murder...