The Portraits Home Latest Decisions Search Benjamin N. Cardozo Ward Hunt Rufus W. Peckham Jr. The remarkable assemblage of 110 paintings, including a number by some of the best known national and regional artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is displayed in several areas of the Court building, most of them lining the walls of the Courtroom itself. The portraits depict former Chief Judges and Associate Judges of the Court of Appeals, Chancellors and others associated with the law and the work of the Court. In a sense, the collection represents a comprehensive history of the jurisprudence of New York State. Not all who have served on the highest tribunal are pictured.
Tradition has it that no current member is portrayed.
Judges may accept the honor only once they have left the bench. The first Judge of the Court of Appeals to be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States was Ward Hunt, who served there from 1873 to 1882. The first and only Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals to be named to the Supreme Court of the United States was Benjamin N. Cardozo, a renowned scholar whose writings are studied to this day throughout the world. Cardozo served on the Court of Appeals as Associate Judge and later Chief Judge from 1914 until he became a Justice of the nation's highest court in 1932. The larger portraits in the Courtroom are of Chief Judges and the smaller of Associate Judges.