Two of seven Court of Appeals nominees are UB School of Law grads

Hon. Judith J. Gische, who serves in the First Department, and Hon. Erin M. Peradotto, in the Fourth Department, are the University at Buffalo School of Law graduates among seven nominees for the state’s Court of Appeals. The New York State Commission on Judicial Nomination released the list of nominees last month. Gov. Andrew Cuomo will select the newest judge to join the state’s seven-member high court.

The vacancy comes with the passing of Judge Paul G. Feinman on March 31, just eight days after he announced his retirement for health reasons. Cuomo will also fill another Court of Appeals vacancy with the planned retirement of Judge Leslie E. Stein on June 4; Justice Peradotto is also a nominee for that seat.

“We are very proud of our graduates who are leaders on and off the bench,” said Aviva Abramovsky, UB School of Law dean. “I am pleased to see that the State of New York’s law school is well represented among the nominees for a seat on New York’s highest court.”

Justice Gische graduated from UB School of Law in 1980 and has served on the Appellate Division bench since 2012. She was elected to New York State Supreme Court in 2008 after serving as an acting justice since 2004.  She began her judicial career as a judge for New York City’s Housing Court in Kings County and was subsequently elected to the Civil Court of the City of New York. Prior to her election to the bench, she clerked in the Appellate Division’s Third Department and worked for eight years in private practice.

Since 2004, Justice Gische has served as an adjunct professor at New York Law School. In 2015, Justice Gische received the UB Law Alumni Association’s Distinguished Alumni Award for the judiciary.

Justice Peradotto, a 1984 graduate of UB School of Law, was named to the Appellate Division in 2006, after her election to the New York State Supreme Court bench in 2003. Earlier, she practiced as a trial attorney in the Eighth Judicial District and elsewhere in the state, and handled appeals before the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, and the New York State Court of Appeals. From 1997-1998, she served as the Assistant Attorney General in Charge of the Buffalo Regional Office of the New York State Attorney General's Office.

A former president of the Bar Association of Erie County, Justice Peradotto has also been a member of the board of directors for the Women Lawyers of Western New York, the Erie County Bar Association’s Volunteer Lawyers Project, and the UB Law Alumni Association . The LAA honored her in 2010 with its Distinguished Alumni Award for the judiciary.

Both justices are members of the law school’s Dean’s Advisory Council.