Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, named Douglas Keith executive director of the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary and its senior legal officer on Tuesday.
A longtime employee of the Brennan Center for Justice, a legal think tank and advocacy organization at New York University School of Law, Keith is Jewish, City Hall said.
Mamdani, who is a frequent and harsh critic of the Jewish state, announced the judiciary panel in July with 18 members, none of them Jewish.
Jewish legal groups sent letters of protest. The mayor was asked about the controversy several times at a July 29 press conference.
“Was it an oversight, and if nothing else, does this present an appearance problem for you at a time when some Jewish New Yorkers are feeling suspicious about your views?” the mayor was asked.
Mamdani said that “any suggestion that the composition of the advisory committee was motivated by religion is false.”
“I did not ask for the religion of each of the person that was put forward,” the mayor added, per a City Hall transcript.
The panel evaluates candidates for appointments to the city’s family and criminal courts, which hear cases of alleged Jew-hatred, and interim appointments to its civil courts, whose judges are elected. It recommends qualified candidates to the mayor.
“New York City’s criminal, family and civil courts make decisions with tremendous impact on people’s lives,” Keith stated on Tuesday.
“I am looking forward to facilitating a process that ensures the judiciary has the independence it needs to do its vital work, that ensures the city’s courts reflect the diverse public that they serve and that is worthy of the public trust,” he stated.
As a deputy director in the Brennan Center’s judiciary program, he worked primarily to promote fair, diverse and impartial courts, according to the center website.
He is also a founding editor of a center publication about state courts and state constitutional law. His most recently published article in the publication analyzes state supreme court races to watch in November.
City Hall said that the NYU School of Law and Duke University graduate “brings a decade of experience focused on judicial selection mechanisms nationwide, court independence and the protection of individual rights.”