2004 NYSDRA Mini-Conference [back to general conference information]

October 7, 2004

Luncheon & Award Ceremony

The afternoon luncheon will culminate with an award ceremony for our Lawrence Cooke Peace Innovator Award recipients, Justices Fern Fisher and Doris Ling-Cohan.  The Lawrence Cooke Peace Innovator Award is intended for an individual or organization who has provided innovative leadership in the field, and will honor an individual or organization based upon a local or NYS state-based innovative. 

Award Recipients:

•      Justice Fern Fisher has taken the initiative in bringing mediation to the Civil Court of the City of New York in 1997.  She appointed a Coordinator of Dispute Resolution to help create a mediation program involving self-represented parties in the Housing Court in Queens. Further expansion included Housing Court in Richmond County, Richmond Civil Court and New York County Civil Court (at the request of Justice Doris Ling-Cohan).

Proving successful, the mediation program was expanded to housing and civil courts throughout the New York City area.  Just this spring in Richmond County, Justice Fisher initiated a new pilot mediation program at the time of filing in which parties receive information and an opportunity to mediate their cases when first filing or answering their case instead of appearing in court - a first step to a multi-door courthouse.  In 1998, all incoming Court Attorneys received a Basic Mediation Training.  Justice Fisher established resource centers to provide legal and community information from a wide variety of organizations to self-represented parties and members of the community throughout New York City courthouses.

Presently, the mediation programs exist in all 5 boroughs and over 4200 cases have been mediated as of July, 2003.

Following the tragedy of September 11^th and in conjunction with attorneys and community groups including Safe Horizon, Justice Fisher creatively initiated a new Landlord Tenant court part in which mediation was available.  This new court part targeted small businesses located near the World Trade Center who suffered financially during the months following the tragedy and found themselves in court for nonpayment of rent.  This “ 9/11 Small Business Court Assistance Project” provided pro bono lawyers to such businesses and trained mediators volunteered from Safe Horizon to help resolve these cases.  The program helped financially troubled landlords and tenants work together to help prevent a potentially devastating loss of businesses in the area and to build up and maintain the area. 

Justice Fisher deserves this award since she has creatively established successful mediation and other ADR programs which provide a non-pressured, informal, and empowering environment for self-represented and other parties throughout the New York City Civil Court. She has been innovative and courageous in making the NYC Civil Courthouse a more responsive environment, in assuring that parties receive respect and justice in court, in responding to the changing needs of the wider community, and in promoting a more peaceful community.

•      Justice Doris Ling-Cohan was elected in November 2002 to become the first female Asian American Supreme Court Justice in New York State, placing in the top two of a field of twelve candidates in the borough of Manhattan.

Prior to being a Supreme Court Justice, she was a Civil Court Judge, the first Asian elected to a public office (other than school board) from a local district, which includes much of Chinatown. She was a staff attorney, senior attorney and managing attorney for Legal Services, an Assistant Attorney General in the Bureau of Consumer Fraud and Protections, Associate Counsel for NYC Department for the Aging, and an adjunct law and Asian American studies professor.

Justice Ling-Cohan was born and raised in New York's Chinatown. Her parents were hardworking immigrants to this country. Emigrating from China, her mother was a seamstress and her father worked in a laundry. At age 19, Judge Ling-Cohan herself worked as a seamstress and thread cutter in a Chinatown sweatshop to help her family, while still in high school. In fact, she has worked long and hard hours all her life and yet managed to graduate from high school with top grades, graduate Summa Cum Laude from Brooklyn College, CUNY, attended New York University School of Law on a full scholarship and graduated with distinction.

Ling-Cohan's ascension to the Supreme Court is the latest leg in a long journey through the world of New York's legal system that began when she was just 12 years old. Her mother, an immigrant seamstress from Canton, had been assaulted in Brooklyn, and her young American-born daughter accompanied her on a confusing trip to a hearing in family court. "All we knew was that we were told to be there on a certain day," Ling-Cohan recalls. "But no one told us where to go, when to come back. There were no translators. When it was over, we had no idea what had happened. That shaped me. It made me realize how important it is to have legal information." Since then she has dedicated a good portion of her career as a lawyer and a judge to helping people navigate the complexities of the courts.

Justice Ling-Cohan is a founder of the mediation program which is currently in place in the pro se part of the Civil Court which utilizes volunteer mediators from Safe Horizon and co-wrote and edited "How to Try or Defend a Civil Case When You Don't Have A Lawyer" (published by the Office of Court Administration).

She serves as a speaker for Not Just Blacks and Jews in Conversation; is active in the National Association of Women Judges; is a mentor of inner city high school students; and has served as a motivational speaker for numerous children's organizations including Passages Academy/Crossroads Juvenile Center, Directions For Our Youth, National Council For Unity and APEX. She is a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and had served on the Superior Courts and Consumer Law Committees and the Network of Bar Leaders.

In addition to active participation in a number of community organizations, she is a founding member of three organizations: Asian American Bar Association, Jade Council (court employees of Asian descent), and New York Asian Women's Center (domestic violence services).

Her other publications include:  Social Security Disability Insurance/Supplemental Security Income (SSI) - A Manual for Mental Health Advocates in New York City (co-authored); Rights of Adult Home Residents (co-authored); Law for City Families (co-edited).

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