lit a candle 2h agomy mum called me about this, she's a court clerk back home and said even here people studied how New York handled matrimonial cases because of her. thirty years from Housing Court to the Appellate Division, that's a whole life in one courtroom after another. 70 is no age.
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Judith J. Gische was an American judge who served more than three decades on New York courts and helped shape modern matrimonial law as an associate justice of the Appellate Division, First Department. She died on 25 September 2026 at the age of 70. Gische studied at Queens College of…
Judith J. Gische was an American judge who served more than three decades on New York courts and helped shape modern matrimonial law as an associate justice of the Appellate Division, First Department. She died on 25 September 2026 at the age of 70.
Gische studied at Queens College of the City University of New York from 1974 to 1975, then earned a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1977, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her Juris Doctor from SUNY Buffalo in 1980. She began her legal career as a judicial clerk at the Appellate Division, Third Department, from late 1980 to early 1982, then practised as an associate attorney with Richenthal, Abrams and Moss in New York City until 1990.
Her judicial career began in May 1990 when she was appointed a Housing Court judge of the Civil Court of the City of New York, sitting in Kings County. Voters elected her a Civil Court judge in November 1993, and she sat in Civil and Small Claims parts. In May 1997 she became an Acting Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, hearing civil matters in New York and Bronx counties. In November 2008 she was elected a Justice of the Supreme Court and continued in Civil Term. In October 2012 she was designated an Associate Justice of the Appellate Division, First Department, serving on that intermediate appellate court through 2022. From 2004 she was also an adjunct professor at New York Law School.
Colleagues remembered Gische as a leading voice in matrimonial and family law whose written work and bench work emphasised intellect, integrity and public service. On the Appellate Division she helped decide appeals that guide trial courts across the First Department in divorce, custody and related civil disputes. Her long path from housing court through Supreme Court to the Appellate Division gave her unusual familiarity with how ordinary New Yorkers experience the justice system.
The New York Law Journal reported her death on 1 October 2026, noting more than thirty years on the bench and tributes from the legal community. A public cause of death was not released in widely available reports. She is remembered as a jurist who combined careful appellate craft with a practical understanding of housing, civil and family litigation, and as a teacher who passed that perspective on to New York Law School students.
Biography adapted from New York Law Journal; Historical Society of the New York Courts biography; Appellate Division, First Department justice page.
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1Judith J. Gische, Associate Justice of the Appellate Division, First Department
by People Forever
