Opinion

Balance for the Court

Gov. Cuomo will get to make his first mark on New York’s highest judicial body in the coming weeks by filling two vacancies on the Court of Appeals.

Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70 next month, creating one opening.

The other vacancy was both unexpected and sad: Judge Theodore Jones, the court’s only African-American, died Monday, apparently of a heart attack, at 68.

Jones was a product of the city public schools and St. John’s Law School; he also served a tour of duty in Vietnam.

He was named to the high court in 2007 by then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer after a stint as the first black administrative judge of state Supreme Court in Brooklyn.

It was there that he rendered perhaps his most important service to the rule of law — and to every New York City resident.

In 2005, he became the first judge ever to take the state’s Taylor Law seriously.

After transit workers defied his injunction and staged an illegal Christmas week strike, Jones fined their union $2.5 million, sent union leader Roger Toussaint to prison for 10 days and imposed smaller fines on two unions that had conducted sympathy boycotts.

For good measure, he ended the Transport Workers Union’s long-cherished right to automatic dues checkoff — imposing a considerable financial burden on the TWU’s coffers.

His strict enforcement of both the letter and the spirit of the Taylor Law may well have cost him what would have been a well-deserved appointment as the Court of Appeals’ chief judge in 2009.

With his death, the machinery is set in motion for Cuomo to name a replacement.

The Commission on Judicial Nominations must prepare a list within 120 days, and Cuomo must name a replacement between 15 and 30 days later.

We hope he does not follow the lead of his predecessor, David Paterson, who passed over Jones and picked a crony of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver as chief judge. The Court of Appeals needs judges who deserve to be there, as well as philosophical balance.

It’s up to the governor to ensure both.