Editor's note: The following is a Jan. 11 letter that the Committee of Retired Justices of the Appellate Division, First Department addressed to State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and State Sen. Brad Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat who chairs the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. It has been edited for Law Journal style.

In a campaign to derail the selection of Appellate Division, Second Department Presiding Justice Hector LaSalle as the next chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals, a coalition of woke members of the legal academy have spewed false and misleading accounts concerning LaSalle's record as a judge.