Dorothy Chin Brandt, Trailblazing Asian American Judge, Dies at 78

Dorothy Chin Brandt, a lawyer who in 1987 became the first female Asian American judge in New York State — and, as such, one of the first two Asian Americans in the state elected to public office — died on Jan. 27 in Queens. She was 78.

The cause of her death, in a hospital, was complications of sepsis, her partner, Jack Macco, said. The couple had planned to marry after she recovered.

In 1986, as a lawyer in private practice without a political base, Justice Chin Brandt lost a Civil Court race in Manhattan by 138 votes out of about 100,000 cast.

The next year, she won the Democratic primary and the general election, blazing a trail for other Asian Americans to be elected to the New York State Legislature; to represent the state in Congress; and to hold office in New York City, including on the City Council.

Less than four decades ago, though, her election was groundbreaking. At the time, there were two Asian American judges in the state, both appointed rather than elected. One of them, Judge Peter Tom of Housing Court, who was born in China, was also elected to the Civil Court in 1987. (In 1994, he became the first Asian American appointed to the Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department. He retired in 2019.)

“I show up in the clerk’s office, and they thought I was the interpreter, because of course I couldn’t be the judge,” Justice Chin Brandt recalled of her first day on the bench in a 2016 interview.

In another interview, she noted, “I had an Asian American face and they had never seen an Asian American judge.”

She was named an acting Supreme Court justice by Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman in 2001 and retired from the bench in 2016.

Describing her as “an extremely competent and elegant judge and human being,” Judge Lippman said in an interview: “She wrote the script for Asian Americans in the New York courts, and was a role model and trailblazer for Asian American women judges. Dorothy was also a leader in the Chinese and Asian American bar, and very active and influential in legal and judicial circles.”

State Senator John Liu, a Queens Democrat and a former New York City comptroller, said Justice Chin Brandt was “a true pioneer and inspiration to Asian Americans across New York State and beyond.”

Dorothy Ku Chin was born on April 9, 1946, in Manhattan. At the time, her father, Henry Chin, an American-born doctor, was serving as an Army captain. Her mother, Hsui (Ling) Chin, a registered nurse, was born in Beijing. Justice Chin Brandt would become the first descendant of a Chinese immigrant to win elective office in New York State.

Dorothy grew up in Queens and graduated from Hunter College High School in Manhattan. She earned a bachelor’s degree in math from the University of Chicago in 1968 and had planned to become a doctor, Mr. Macco said, but switched to law because she couldn’t stand the sight of blood.

She taught for a year and then enrolled at Brooklyn Law School. She graduated in 1974 and, the next year, earned a Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School.

She served as an assistant dean of graduate legal studies at Harvard while teaching at Boston College Law School. She returned to New York in 1978 to take a job as an associate at Shearman & Sterling and later joined Dilworth Paxson in Washington.

She was prompted to run for office, she said, after overhearing a racist remark made by a retired judge at a public event.

In 1984, she married Kevin Brandt, a stockbroker; they divorced in 1989. Her older brother, Frederick, died in 2005. Mr. Macco is her only immediate survivor.

She served in Civil Court in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens; in Criminal Court in Queens; and, from 1991 to 1992 and 2001 to 2016, as an acting New York State Supreme Court justice.

While sitting in Civil Court, she was a founder of the Franklin H. Williams Judicial Commission, a court-based panel dedicated to fostering ethnically and racially diverse participation in the courts and the legal profession and to improving the system’s treatment of minorities.

In 2019, she received a lifetime achievement award from the Organization of Chinese Americans.

Randall T. Eng, who became the first Asian American judge appointed to the New York City Criminal Court in 1983 and was later the state’s first Asian American presiding justice, praised Justice Chin Brandt in an email. She was, he wrote, “very well regarded by judges and court personnel for her scholarship, outstanding judicial temperament, and her ability to mentor new lawyers and judges as they came into the court.”