Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum (September 16, 1929 – February 5, 2016) was a

United States district judge The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district cou ...

of the

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case citations, S.D.N.Y.) is a federal trial court whose geographic jurisdiction encompasses eight counties of New York State. Two of these are in New York City: New ...

Education

Born into a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family, Cedarbaum grew up in the Crown Heights section of

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. She graduated from

Erasmus Hall High School Erasmus Hall High School was a four-year public high school located at 899–925 Flatbush Avenue between Church and Snyder Avenues in the Flatbush neighborhood of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It was founded in 1786 as Erasmus Hall Ac ...

Flatbush, Brooklyn Flatbush is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood consists of several subsections in central Brooklyn and is generally bounded by Prospect Park to the north, East Flatbush to the east, Midwood to the south, ...

. Cedarbaum received her

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

(B.A.) degree from

Barnard College Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...

in 1950, and then her

Bachelor of Laws Bachelor of Laws ( la, Legum Baccalaureus; LL.B.) is an undergraduate law degree in the United Kingdom and most common law jurisdictions. Bachelor of Laws is also the name of the law degree awarded by universities in the People's Republic of Ch ...

(LL.B.) from

Columbia Law School Columbia Law School (Columbia Law or CLS) is the law school of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university in New York City. Columbia Law is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious law schools in the world and has always ranked i ...

in 1953.

Professional career

She began her career as a law clerk for Judge Edward Jordan Dimock of the

from 1953 to 1954. She served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1954 to 1957. She served as an attorney of the Court of Claims Section of the Office of the Deputy

United States Attorney General The United States attorney general (AG) is the head of the United States Department of Justice, and is the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government of the United States. The attorney general serves as the principal advisor to the p ...

for the

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United Stat ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, from 1958 to 1959. She then served as a part-time legal consultant for

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

from 1959 to 1962. She served as first assistant counsel of the New York State Moreland Commission on the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law from 1963 to 1964. She was associate counsel of the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

in New York City from 1965 to 1979. She was Acting Village Justice of the Village of Scarsdale, New York from 1978 to 1982 and then was Village Justice of the same municipality from 1982 to 1986. She was in private practice with the law firm of

Davis Polk & Wardwell Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, better known as Davis Polk is a white-shoe, international law firm headquartered in New York City with 980 attorneys worldwide and offices in Washington, D.C., Northern California, London, Paris, Madrid, Hong Kong, Be ...

in New York City from 1979 to 1986.

Federal judicial service

Cedarbaum was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on February 3, 1986, to a seat vacated by Judge Charles E. Stewart Jr. She was confirmed by the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

on March 3, 1986, and received her commission on March 4, 1986. Cedarbaum assumed

senior status Senior status is a form of semi- retirement for United States federal judges. To qualify, a judge in the federal court system must be at least 65 years old, and the sum of the judge's age and years of service as a federal judge must be at leas ...

on March 31, 1998, serving in that status until her death.

Notable cases

Cedarbaum oversaw the case against the would-be Times Square bomber

Faisal Shahzad Faisal Shahzad ( ur, ; born , 1979) is a Pakistani-American citizen who was arrested for the attempted May 1, 2010, Times Square car bombing. On , 2010, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, he confessed to 10 counts arising from the b ...

, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Tuesday, October 5, 2010. She also presided over the

Martha Stewart Martha Helen Stewart (, ; born August 3, 1941) is an American retail businesswoman, writer, and television personality. As founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, she gained success through a variety of business ventures, encompassing pu ...

case.

Personal

Cedarbaum was married on August 25, 1957 to the late Bernard Cedarbaum, long-time partner at Carter Ledyard & Milburn, and has two children, Daniel, a lawyer and leader of Reconstructionist Judaism in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, and Jonathan, a lawyer in D.C. who clerked for the now-retired

Associate Justice Associate justice or associate judge (or simply associate) is a judicial panel member who is not the chief justice in some jurisdictions. The title "Associate Justice" is used for members of the Supreme Court of the United States and some sta ...

David Souter David Hackett Souter ( ; born September 17, 1939) is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1990 until his retirement in 2009. Appointed by President George H. W. Bush to fill the seat ...

of the Supreme Court.Jonathan G. Cedarbaum
WilmerHale. Retrieved on 2013-10-23.

References

Sources

'Retirement' Missing From Vocabulary Of NY Judges

The Federal Judge With Terror On Her Docket

Judge Rules City Owns The Name Tavern On The Green

Project Continuum: In Chambers with Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum '50

Wall Street Journal article discussing Judge Cedarbaum in the context of Judge Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cedarbaum, Miriam Goldman 1929 births 2016 deaths Columbia Law School alumni Barnard College alumni Erasmus Hall High School alumni New York (state) state court judges Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York United States district court judges appointed by Ronald Reagan 20th-century American judges 20th-century American Jews Assistant United States Attorneys Davis Polk & Wardwell lawyers 20th-century American women judges 21st-century American Jews