Hon. Dorothy Chin Brandt ’74, Pioneering Asian American Judge, Dies at 79

The Hon. Dorothy Chin Brandt, retired Acting Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, Criminal Term, Queens County, who made history as the first Asian American woman judge in New York State and the first elected Asian American public official in the state, when she was elected in 1987 to the New York City Civil Court, died on January 27.

Following her term in Civil Court, she became a judge of the New York City Criminal Court in 1998. She was appointed as an Acting Justice of the New York State Supreme Court in 2001 by then Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman and re-appointed by Chief Administrative Judge A. Gail Prudenti in 2013. She retired from the bench in 2017.

During her long and esteemed career, including 30 years of public service on the bench, Chin Brandt worked tirelessly to fight the racism and sexism that Asian Americans and other minorities faced, in and out of the courtroom, and paved the way for generations of lawyers and judges to follow her example.

“Justice Chin Brandt was a trailblazer throughout her remarkable career and helped transform every institution she touched – law firms, the courts, legal education and Brooklyn Law School,” said David Meyer, President and Joseph Crea Dean. “We are enormously proud and grateful for her legacy.”  

A self-professed “daughter of New York,” Chin Brandt was born on April 9, 1946, in Queens to parents who were both medical professionals and whose maternal grandparents had immigrated to the U.S. from Taishan, China. She attended Hunter High School before receiving her undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago.

Following her 1974 graduation from Brooklyn Law School, she began her career as Assistant Dean of Graduate Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, where she was the only Chinese American and one of the few women in the administration.

Then, after several years in private practice in New York, beginning in 1978 at Shearman & Sterling as an associate and later, at Dilworth & Paxson in Washington, D.C., Chin Brandt decided to run for office. In a NY City Bar Association talk in 2014, she recounted that after learning of racist remarks made by a retired judge at a public event, she was infuriated and took action. “I did some further investigation into our judicial system,” she said, “and found we had no elected Asian American judges. I decided I would make the bench a little more diverse.”

Although she lost that first election for Civil Court, she ran again and won the second time. While at the Civil Court in 1988, Chin Brandt was also one of the founders of the nation's first court-based commission dedicated to ethnic and racial fairness in the courts: the Franklin H. Williams Judicial Commission. The commission conducted a comprehensive study on minority participation in the courts and legal profession and perceptions regarding the treatment of minorities in the courts. “As soon as the commission report came out,” Chin Brandt said in a 2018 interview with the NY Courts Amici Podcast, “the court system went under diversity and sensitivity training. We looked at legal education. There were very few Asian American lawyers. We didn’t have an Asian American Bar at that time. So we started the Chinese Lawyers Association. Now the Asian American Bar is very active, the jury pool has widened, and minorities are involved in serving.”

After her retirement from the bench, Chin Brandt continued to share her experiences as a speaker at universities and organizations internationally, and supported a scholarship fund focused on young people and empowerment. Among her several awards, in 2019, Chin Brandt was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Organization of Chinese Americans for her demonstrated sustained service in advocating for and supporting the Asian American Pacific Islander Community.

In an online tribute to Chin Brandt, NY State Senator John Liu said, “She took the bench at a time when the courts were not perceived as friendly to minorities, and she set out to remedy perceived bias with fairness, integrity, and impartiality. Her influence resonates today, and her legacy will continue to inspire those who uphold the values of justice, equality, and public service.”

“When I first was elected as a judge,” Chin Brandt said in a 2018 interview with Sinovision, “I was given a statue of Justice, who is a lady. She’s blind and she determines what is right by the scales of justice, and not by her stereotypes or prejudice. Whenever I used to take the bench, I would have this image of Madame Justice in my mind.”