By Andrew Jensen
Andrew Jensen is a 3L at Albany Law School and Associate Editor of the Albany Law School Government Law Review, Volume 20. While at Albany Law School, Andrew has served as a Veterans Pro Bono Project Board Member, Government Law Center Fellow, Student Representative to the Government Law Center Advisory Board, and an intern with the New York State Comptroller’s Office Division of Investigations, Rensselaer County Supreme Court, and with New York State United Teachers.
Prior to attending law school, Andrew graduated Magna Cum Laude from Augusta State University with a B.A. in Political Science and a Master’s in Public Administration. Following graduate school, Andrew Commissioned as an officer in the United States Air Force, serving as an aviator and instructor for 10 years. He then transitioned to civilian life, serving as the Deputy Director of Emergency Management for the City of Augusta, GA.
This paper offers a novel insight into the jurisprudence of New York's highest court. Instead of using traditional legal lenses to analyze and conceptualize the judicial decision-making of the Judges on the Court of Appeals, a cross-disciplinary approach to understanding how the jurists think and approach problems offers a unique perspective on the state of the Court and its future.
Cognitive Rigidity, often found in Right-Wing Authoritarian personalities, leaves little room for ambiguity or innovation. Rigidity requires a thinker to apply old models and approaches to new problems, even when the solution does not fit the question presented to the thinker. Operationally defining Cognitive Rigidity within the sphere of judicial decision making provides a useful way of understanding how a court may approach novel or complex legal issues.
This paper uses two actual innocence cases from 2018 to display rigid thinking in judicial approaches and how it was countered in dissent by the now-Chief Judge Rowan Wilson, along with his frequent voting partner, Judge Rivera. These cases illustrate the different wings of thought among the Judges and how they functionally approach legal issues across the spectrum of cases brought before the Court.
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