My friend, federal Judge Harold Baer Jr., in a new book recounts seven vignettes illustrating what happens to the rule of law when political forces undermine the independence of the judiciary; Judges Under Fire: Human Rights, Independent Judges, and the Rule of Law (ABA Publishing 2011). His point is that without independent judges citizens lack protection from arbitrary governmental decisions. Independent judges alone can counter the forces of official arrogance and tyranny.

Judge Baer need not belabor his point; he has lived it: ten years as a State Supreme Court Justice and eighteen as a federal district court judge in the Southern District of New York. Literally thousands of litigants and lawyers have appeared before Judge Baer, and can attest to his independence of mind, a formidable judicial presence, and hard work. No judge currently sitting on the state or federal trial bench publishes more written opinions than does Judge Baer.

Not everyone agrees with Judge Baer all the time of course, but that is his point. Of Judge Baer’s seven vignettes, the one with the most impact is Judge Baer’s own experience when, in 1995, he suppressed 34 kilos of cocaine, 2 kilos of heroin, and the videotaped confession of a woman delivering the drugs. This was not a popular opinion, and, to avoid losing the case, the police had to produce substantially more evidence on rehearing than it had produced during the original hearing.

Judge Baer, for more than sixteen years, has supervised the Benjamin decree overseeing prisoner rights at Rikers Island. In this capacity Judge Baer has compelled the City to focus on such matters as fire safety, cleanliness and access to lawyers and law books. I have written elsewhere that some judges handling similar prison cases have been too independent and crossed the line to become partisans, but that too is Judge Baer’s point. Judges are supposed to be an independent force protecting prisoners and others under state control, an argument which he made directly in a law review article criticizing my position. See 52 n.y.l. sch. l. rev. 3 (2007-8).

Judge Baer is now a senior judge, but continues to act with independence. In 2010 Judge Baer helped start a reentry program to help ex-offenders get started and avoid being rearrested after their release from custody.

Ross Sandler

One hundred and forty feet below Grand Central Terminal sandhogs have excavated caverns spacious enough to dock a Carnival Cruise ship. The caverns will eventually support eight tracks and four platforms to handle Long Island Rail Road trains carrying upwards of 160,000 daily commuters to and from Manhattan’s East Side. This enormous construction project will cost over $8 billion when completed. It will redraw New York City’s commuter map by adding 7.75 miles of new tunnels that will run from Sunnyside Yards in Queens under the East River, down Park Avenue, into Grand Central, and continue down to 35th Street for a train holding yard. This big project is virtually invisible to office workers, commuters and tourists who happily continue on their way while the sandhogs blast and work in floodlit caverns below.

Dr. Michael Horodniceanu, the President of the MTA Capital Construction Company, is in charge of the project. He described the project at a CityLaw breakfast on October 14, 2011. [See the video on www.citylaw.org]. On November 8, 2011, Dr. Horodniceanu led a tour of the caverns and construction sites. From the Lower Level of Grand Central, the tour members, outfitted with vests, hard hats and muck boots, entered a subterranean world of anthropomorphic earthmoving machines and floodlit rock- and mud-scapes. Sandhogs were blasting three massive shafts for escalators that will eventually descend via slopes of 60 degrees to the mezzanine and platforms below. At the lower platform level workers waterproofed and finished the cavern’s ceiling. Other workers were applying, pouring or finishing concrete walls. The subterranean work will continue probably until 2016.

The scale of the East Side Access project rivals the original construction of Penn Station or Grand Central itself, although the artistry and grandeur of those earlier projects remain unequaled. The Robert Moses era of building big may have ended forty years ago, but big public works projects can still be built: witness the Second Avenue subway, the extension of the No. 7 line, the Third Water Tunnel and East Side Access. Robert Moses famously disliked tunnels because they did not change the skyline. The subterranean infrastructure projects currently being built will not change the skyline, but they ensure that New York City will continue to be a livable city.

Bike riding in New York City is increasing, but the number of biker deaths and serious injuries remain the same. The City, as noted last month, asserts that bike riding has become relatively safer. There is, however, no data available on less serious injuries or on pedestrian confrontations both physical and those that produce frighteningly close calls. The attractiveness of bike riding makes certain the continued growth in riding. The City, while encouraging this growth, could do even more for safety. Think of the recent initiatives that have produced aggressive laws and rigid enforcement for auto safety: new child car seats, seat belts laws, noisy back up signals, unblinking red light cameras, universal air bags, required driver training, and crash worthy car designs. Bike safety on city streets needs similar innovations. 

Has bicycle riding become safer in New York City? On July 28, 2011 the New York City Department of Transportation answered “Yes” by presenting statistics that showed that bike riding was 72 percent safer in 2010 than it was 2001. How good are DOT’s statistics?

Despite significant efforts, the absolute number of bicyclist fatalities and severe injuries has hardly moved. In 2000 there were 18 fatalities and 351 severe injuries. In 2010 there was no change: 19 fatalities and 361 severe injuries. During the year 2010 New York City experienced the decade’s second highest total of fatalities and severe injuries. And there was a worse statistic for bike advocates; while there were only 12 fatalities in 2009, fatalities jumped to 19 in 2010. 

The taxi/ livery plan the legislature passed in Albany is sure to fail because it ignores economic reality. Giving 30,000 liveries the right to accept street hails will disappoint supporters, disrupt beneficial relationships, and likely ruin cab service for everyone.

The law’s purpose is to provide street hail service in areas presently without street hail service. But street hail service is only viable in dense areas where cabbies know that riders regularly appear. Taxis nowhere in the world provide regular street hail service in neighborhoods that lack the requisite density of demand. Instead taxi service is provided on-call. New York liveries provide good on-call service. True, there are areas throughout the City like Fordham Road which could support street hail service or cab stands to serve as street hail locations. The Bloomberg Administration wrongly rejected both options.

Instead, the Bloomberg Administration has opted for a plan that has the potential to destroy the taxi industry. Many successful on-call taxi businesses will likely fail without the control of drivers that calling in provides. This means worse on-call taxi service for much of the city since street hail cabbies cruise where the business is, not where an occasional passenger wants a ride.