A Distinguished Path in Public Service (Tribute to Judge Judith Kaye)

Chief Judge Kaye and I have shared similar life experiences-she is my kind of woman. As she said when accepting an award that bears my name, the beginnings of our paths "in some ways [were] drastically different."1 She aptly described my childhood as a cowgirl on my parents' ranch: "mending fences, riding with cowboys, shooting [my] own .22-calibre rifle." 2 Hers was different; she grew up "at the foot of the Catskill Mountains, working in [her] parents' clothing store."3 As she was quick to point out, "[n]o one there mended fences of any sort. There wasn't a cowboy in sight, and use of a rifle could land you some serious time in the Sullivan County Jail."4

However, in significant respects, we have led similar lives. Chief Judge Kaye attended New York University School of Law less than ten years after I studied at Stanford Law School, a time when not too many women studied law-she was one of ten women in a class of three hundred students. We both faced gender discrimination when first we sought legal work. "A decade after Justice O'Connor graduated from law school," she has written, "the big firms still had no wel come mat out for women." 5 Nonetheless, after "career path[s] [with] twists, turns and detours, with marriage and children along the way," we both found rewarding careers in public service as judges. 6 About two years after I became the first woman to serve the Supreme Court, she became the first woman appointed to New York State's highest court. We served our respective