MANHATTAN (CN) — Self-assured like the Broadway actress she once aspired to be, New York's new chief federal judge, Colleen McMahon, said she has questioned only one of her rulings in two decades on the bench.
It is a remarkable expression of confidence for any veteran jurist, let alone one with McMahon's record of leadership. The Buckeye State-born redhead was formally inducted on June 1 as chief judge of New York's Southern District.
Sitting for a 90-minute interview in chambers to discuss her ascension, McMahon exhibited flashes of former theatrical ambitions from her high school days.
McMahon was still in private practice in the early 1990s when she received an unexpected lunch invite from the ceiling-cracking judge in whose steps she would follow.
By that time, New York Court of Appeals Justice Judith Kaye already had risen higher than any other woman in the state judiciary. She would later become New York's first female chief judge.
McMahon had been a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison at the time. She counts the commission Kaye tapped her to lead as ushering in her "signature accomplishment" — the overhaul of jury service in the state of New York.
During her account of the project's beginnings, McMahon broke into several impressions of Kaye — one of the most renowned justices in New York history.
Once the state's highest court named Kaye its chief, she held on to that position for 14 years, longer than any of her male predecessors.
Apparently Kaye had been approached by a frequent would-be juror. "Why do I keep getting called for jury duty and my next-door neighbor never does," she asked. "Would you figure that out?"
The Jury Project, a 30-member commission that McMahon chaired, ultimately produced 82 recommendations, including streamlining summonses, increasing juror compensation, limiting peremptory challenges by lawyers, banning mandatory sequestrations and ending professional exemptions.
New York's Legislature approved nearly all of them, and signs of their success are still evident. McMahon herself got called for jury service last year because of her exclusion-eliminating work in 1995.
McMahon credited Betsy Plevan with steering the commission away from making an exemption just for judges. "If you do that, the camel's nose is under the tent," said Plevan, who would later become the New York City Bar Association's second female president.
"There actually has been a cultural change," McMahon said of the state's jury system.
"The jurors are treated nicely. The room is clean. There is an effort made to make the process move as quickly as it can move."
The View From the Judgment Seat
McMahon spent her next three years at New York Court of Claims, a far different environment from her 25th floor chambers at the immaculate Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse.
"There's a nitty-gritty realness to [state courts]," she said. "Everything is beautiful here. And majestic. A little — sterile is probably a bad word — but it's down and dirty over there. There's a realness to it that many people find off-putting."
The remark holds more than a little nostalgia.