José A. Cabranes
Encyclopedia
José Alberto Cabranes is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
. Formerly a practicing lawyer, government official, and law teacher, he was the first Puerto Rican
appointed to a federal judgeship in the continental United States (1979).
into a family of educators; both his mother and father were school teachers. Both parents were educated in Puerto Rico's public schools and at the then newly founded University of Puerto Rico in the first decades of the Twentieth Century, part of the first generation of Puerto Ricans educated under the American flag after Spain's transfer of the island to the United States following the Spanish-American War
(1898).
José Cabranes's mother, Carmen López Cabranes, was born in Humacao, PR, in the southeastern part of the island, and graduated with a teaching degree from the University of Puerto Rico in 1930. After graduation, Mrs. Cabranes worked as a grammar school teacher, and for a period during the Second World War, as director of the San Juan school lunch program. In 1946, she moved with her family to the South Bronx, where her husband had been recruited by the National Council of Jewish Women to become the executive director of Melrose House, a settlement house that had historically served Jewish immigrants, but was then principally serving its neighborhood’s recently-arrived Puerto Rican population.
Mrs. Cabranes became an editor of Spanish-language publications for McGraw-Hill, and was the production editor of the journals of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
While living in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s, Carmen Cabranes was involved in politics, participating in John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign and Robert F. Kennedy’s 1964 senatorial campaign. She worked closed at her husband’s side in the cultural, civic and religious leadership of the Puerto Rican community in New York.
The couple retired to Santurce, Puerto Rico, in 1965, where Mrs. Cabranes was briefly the editor of the industrial guide of Puerto Rico’s Economic Development Administration. She was active in pro-statehood politics, participating exuberantly in mass rallies well into her 90's. She died in San Juan in 2006 at the age of 96.
José A. Cabranes’s father, Manuel Cabranes, was born in Toa Alta, PR, a rural town in the hills of the island’s north-central region, and began his career as a rural school teacher in the countryside around Toa Alta. In time he became a teacher in the island’s capital city and principal of the Rafael M. de Labra School in Santurce, PR. In 1931, he and two other Puerto Rican teachers were selected for graduate training fellowships in the continental United States in the newly-developing professional field of social work, thereby becoming the first professionally trained social workers in Puerto Rico. Returning from graduate work at Fordham University in 1933, Manuel Cabranes served as a supervisor of social work in several of the reconstruction programs of the territorial government of the New Deal era (1934–1940), organizing and directing the territory’s first program of probation and parole (1934–1936) and later, in Mayaguez, serving as director of the Escuela Industrial Para Niños (Industrial School for Boys), one of the first “reform schools” on the island (1940–1942).
Manuel Cabranes was a founder of the probation and parole office of the island’s federal court, serving from 1942 to 1946 as Chief Probation Officer of the U.S. District Court in Puerto Rico.
He was serving in the federal court of Puerto Rico when he was recruited to become director of Melrose House in the South Bronx, part of the first airborne migration to New York City in the post-war era. José Cabranes and an older brother, Manuel A., studied at St. Anslem’s School in the South Bronx, and later, in the public schools of Flushing, Queens.
Manuel Cabranes in 1948 was appointed the first director of the office of the government of Puerto Rico in New York City by Gov. Jesús T. Piñero
, and also served for several years under the island’s first elected governor, Luis Muñoz Marín
. As the principal Puerto Rican Government spokesman for the mass of Puerto Ricans who had recently migrated to New York, he was called upon to defend them when attacked by opponents of the migration, including major newspapers.
The government of Puerto Rico office headed by Manuel Cabranes in New York was attacked in November 1950 by Puerto Rican Nationalists who simultaneously attempted to assassinate President Harry Truman at Blair House in Washington and Governor Muñoz Marín
in San Juan. The two home-made bombs hurled at the New York office failed to explode.
In 1951, Manuel Cabranes began to serve in New York City Government
, where he served as Consultant to the Commissioner of Welfare and was active in the civic life of New York’s Puerto Rican community and a regular contributor on cultural affairs in the city’s Spanish-language newspapers, El Diario de Nueva York and La Prensa. He was a leading Roman Catholic layman, serving the Archdiocese of New York for many years as Chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Feast of St. John the Baptist, the annual religious celebration of the feast day of the patron saint of Puerto Rico. In a time before the ready availability of public scholarships for college study, he joined in organizing the New York Puerto Rican Scholarship Fund in 1952, which awarded cash scholarships to support undergraduate and graduate education of New York Puerto Rican youth, and he led the organization for more than a decade.
Manuel Cabranes retired from the New York City government in 1965 and returned with his wife to Puerto Rico, where he taught sociology at the College of the Sacred Heart, in Santurce, and was a regular contributor of articles on various subjects to Spanish-language newspapers and journals. He died in San Juan in 1984 at the age of 79.
José Cabranes graduated from Flushing High School
in 1957 and earned a bachelor of arts degree in History from Columbia College in 1961. Between college and law school at Yale
, he taught History of Puerto Rico and History of the United States at the Colegio San Ignacio de Loyola, in Rio Piedras, PR. He earned his law degree from Yale in 1965 and was awarded a Kellett Research Fellowship
from Columbia College and the Humanitarian Trust Studentship in Public International Law from the Faculty Board of Law of the University of Cambridge
to study international law at Queens' College, University of Cambridge, in England
. In 1967, he earned his M.Litt. (Masters of Letters) in International Law, and returned to New York city to practice law.
of New York, an organization that helps inner-city Hispanic youth prepare for higher education, and he was a founding member of the board of directors of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, of which he was later (1975–1980) Chairman.
In 1971, Cabranes left law practice to become Associate Professor of Law at Rutgers University
Law School, in Newark
, where he taught administrative law, conflicts of law and international law. While at Rutgers Law School he continued to live in New York City, and in 1971 was appointed by Mayor John V. Lindsay as a member of the board of directors of a newly-created public corporation, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation.
In 1973, Cabranes took a leave of absence from Rutgers Law School to accept appointment by the Governor of Puerto Rico, Rafael Hernández-Colón, as Special Counsel to the Governor and head of the Commonwealth’s Washington office (later known as the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration
).
In 1975, he moved to New Haven, when he was appointed by Yale’s President, Kingman Brewster, Jr., as Yale’s first general counsel. He served as Yale’s general counsel also under Acting President Hanna Holborn Gray
(later President of the University of Chicago) and President A. Bartlett Giamatti
.
While General Counsel of Yale University (1975–1980), Cabranes served in a number of part-time public positions, including as a Public Member of the United States Delegation to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Belgrade, 1977–1978) and as Consultant to Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance (1977–1978). He was elected a member of the Council on Foreign Relations
, and published a legislative history of the 1917 law that collectively conferred American citizenship of the people of Puerto Rico, Citizenship and the American Empire (Yale University Press, 1978).
President Jimmy Carter
appointed Cabranes as one of the lay members of the President’s Commission on Mental Health, chaired by Mrs. Rosalyn Carter (1977–1979), and President Carter was reported to have been ready to appoint him to an ambassadorial position. Cabranes’s refusal to accept appointment as Ambassador to Colombia, after the Colombian government’s initial hesitation to accept a Puerto Rican as the American envoy, led to a political firestorm and charges by national Hispanic leaders of the White House’s mismanagement of an appointment they had supported.
Cabranes was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut in December 1979 and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in August 1994.
Throughout his judicial career, Cabranes’s principal avocational activity has been university trusteeship, including the boards of the two American universities of which he is an alumnus. He served as a trustee of Colgate University, in Hamilton, NY, from 1981 to 1989, and as a successor trustee of Yale (Fellow of the Yale Corporation), from 1987-1999. He was the first Roman Catholic to serve on the Yale Corporation. Since 2000, he has been a trustee of Columbia University.
of New York and Abraham A. Ribicoff
of Connecticut were reported to have offered to recommend his appointment to President Carter.
Eventually opting for Connecticut, Cabranes accepted the offer of sponsorship of Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff. President Jimmy Carter nominated Cabranes on November 6, 1979 to the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut
. Cabranes was unanimously confirmed on December 10, 1979, thus becoming the first Puerto Rican to serve as a federal judge in the continental United States.
While serving on the District Court, Cabranes was elected by the Judicial Conference of the United States to the Board of the Federal Judicial Center, the educational arm of the federal judiciary whose chairman is the Chief Justice of the United States. In 1988, Chief Justice Rehnquist named Cabranes as one of five federal judges on the Federal Courts Study Committee, a fifteen-member commission created by Act of Congress to study the administration of the federal courts.
In 1994, it was Senator Moynihan who made possible Cabranes’s elevation to the United States Court of Appeals. Moynihan recommended Cabranes for a New York seat on that Court and on May 24, 1994, President Bill Clinton
nominated him to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
, based in New York. His nomination was confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate on August 9, 1994. Cabranes thus became the second Puerto Rican named to a U.S. Court of Appeals, after Juan R. Torruella
who had been appointed by Ronald Reagan
in 1984 to the First Circuit
. Cabranes also became the first Hispanic judge to serve on the Second Circuit.
Contemporary news accounts reported that in 1993 Cabranes was considered by President Clinton for appointment to the seat on the Supreme Court of the United States
that ultimately went to Ruth Bader Ginsburg
. Had he been appointed, Cabranes would have been the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice. These reports are confirmed in the autobiography of former Clinton administration adviser George Stephanopoulos
, All Too Human: A Political Education. Newspaper accounts in 1994 likewise reported that Cabranes was considered for the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Harry Blackmun
, which ultimately was filled by Stephen Breyer
.
United States v. Gatlin, 216 F.3d 207 (2d Cir. 2000): Cabranes, writing for the panel in a matter of first appellate impression, held that the district court was without congressionally authorized jurisdiction to try a civilian charged with committing a crime against an individual on a United States military installation abroad. Cabranes concluded that such crimes fell within a "jurisdictional gap" that was created 40 years ago when the Supreme Court ruled that civilians may not be tried in courts martial, and directed that a copy of the opinion be forwarded to members of Congress for their consideration. Following the panel's
decision, Congress enacted a statute remedying the jurisdictional gap.
In re United States (Coppa), 267 F.3d 132 (2d Cir. 2001): Cabranes, writing for the panel and granting the government's petition for mandamus, held that the district court misapplied the teachings of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963) and its progeny in holding that the government was required, as a matter of constitutional law, to disclose all impeachment evidence immediately, pursuant to defendants' request for such, without regard to its materiality and far in advance of trial.
United States v. Thomas, 274 F.3d 655 (2d Cir. 2001) (en banc): Cabranes, writing for the unanimous en banc court, held that the teachings of the Supreme Court's decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000) compel the conclusion that drug type and quantity are elements of the offense under 21 U.S.C. §841 that must be charged in the indictment and submitted to the jury for its finding beyond a reasonable doubt.
United States v. Reyes, 283 F.3d 446 (2d Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 833 (2002): Cabranes, writing for the panel, provided an account of the United States Probation Office functions and held that a probation officer conducting a court-imposed home visit of a convicted person serving a term of federal supervised release is not subject to the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment or to the reasonable suspicion standard applicable to probation searches under United States v. Knight, 534 U.S. 112 (2001). Cabranes also concluded that, contrary to the so-called "stalking horse" theory, the law permits cooperation between probation officers and law enforcement personnel.
United States v. Quinones, 313 F.3d 49 (2d Cir. 2002), reh 'g denied 317 F. 3d 86 (2d Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 540 U.S. 1051 (2003): Cabranes, writing for the panel, held that the district court erred by finding the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 unconstitutional. Cabranes held that, to the extent that the challenge against the statute relied upon the Eighth Amendment, it was foreclosed by the Supreme Court's decision in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976). With respect to the Due Process Clause, Cabranes held that it protected against government infringement upon rights that were so rooted in the traditions and conscience of the people as to be ranked as fundamental, but that the claim that there was a fundamental right to a continued opportunity for exoneration throughout the course of one's natural life was not (as the district court had suggested) a novel issue, and indeed, was foreclosed by relevant Supreme Court precedents.
United States v. Yousef, 327 F.3d 56 (2d Cir. 2003), cert. denied 540 U.S. 933 (2003): Cabranes, writing jointly with other members of the panel, held that the district court erroneously concluded that the acts charged in one of the counts against the defendant were offenses against the law of nations that supported the exercise of universal jurisdiction. Cabranes concluded that customary international law currently does not provide for the prosecution of "terrorist" acts under the universality principle, in part due to the failure of States to achieve anything like consensus on the definition of terrorism. Cabranes nonetheless held that prosecution and conviction of the defendant on the count in question was both consistent with and required by the United States' treaty obligations and domestic laws.
Flores v. Southern Peru Copper Corporation, 343 F.3d 140 (2d Cir. 2003): Cabranes, writing for the panel, held that customary international law, for the violation of which an alien has a private right of action under Alien Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1350, is limited to those clear and unambiguous rules by which states universally abide, or to which they accede, out of a sense of legal obligation and mutual concern. Cabranes concluded that the rights to life and health are insufficiently definite to constitute rules of customary international law and that plaintiffs, who alleged that Peruvian operations of an American
mining company had caused severe lung disease, have not submitted evidence sufficient to establish that customary international law prohibits intranational pollution.
Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan v. Kerik, 356 F.3d 197 (2d Cir. 2004), cert. denied 125 S. Ct. 655 (2004): Cabranes, writing for the panel, upheld New York's anti-mask statute against constitutional challenge, holding that masks worn by self-described members of an "unincorporated political membership association that advocates on behalf of the white race and the Christian faith" did not constitute expressive conduct entitled to first amendment protection. Cabranes concluded that where a
statute banning conduct imposes a burden on the wearing of an element of an expressive uniform, which element has no independent or incremental expressive value, the first amendment is not implicated.
Jeffreys v. City of New York, 426 F.3d 549 (2d Cir. 2005): Cabranes, writing for the panel, affirmed a district court's dismissal of a suit alleging excessive force on the part of New York police officers. Cabranes held that, notwithstanding the general rule that district courts may not weigh evidence or assess the credibility of witnesses at the summary judgment stage, a district court may grant summary judgment where a plaintiff relies almost exclusively on his own testimony and that testimony is "so replete with inconsistencies and improbabilities" that no reasonable juror would undertake the suspension of disbelief
necessary to credit he allegations made in the complaint.
Hayden v. Pataki, 449 F.3d 305 (2d Cir. 2006) (en banc): Cabranes, writing for a majority of the en banc court, held that section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 42 U.S.C. § 1973, did not extend to a New York statute that disenfranchised currently incarcerated felons and parolees, N.Y. Elec. Law §5-106. Cabranes held that Congress did not intend to include prisoner disenfranchisement provisions of the type adopted by New York within the coverage of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and that Congress made no clear statement of an intent to modify the federal balance by applying the Voting Rights Act to these provisions.
Iqbal v. Hasty, 490 F.3d 143 (2d Cir. 2007): In a concurring opinion, Cabranes urged the Supreme Court to revisit and clarify its precedents on pleading standards in order to determine whether they strike the right balance between the need to deter unlawful conduct and the dangers of exposing public officials to burdensome litigation. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the adequacy of the pleadings in this case. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 128 S.Ct. 2931 (2008).
Mora v. New York, 524 F.3d 183 (2d Cir. 2008): Cabranes, writing for a unanimous panel on a question of first impression, held that the requirement of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations that a detained alien be informed of the availability of consular notification and access did not establish a right that could be vindicated in a civil rights action for damages. He also concluded that the detention of an alien without being informed of the availability of consular notification and access did not amount to a tort in violation of customary international law cognizable under the Alien Tort Statute.
Ricci v. DeStefano
, 530 F.3d 88 (2d Cir 2008): In a dissenting opinion joined by five other members of the 13-member court, Cabranes objected to the perfunctory affirmance of an award of summary judgment to the defendants in a civil rights action. Cabranes dissented from the denial of en banc rehearing of this case, observing that the appeal raised important questions of first impression regarding the application of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and Title VII's prohibition on discriminatory employment practices-primarily, whether a city employer may disregard the results of a qualifying employment examination, which was carefully constructed to ensure race-neutrality, on the ground that the results of that examination yielded too many qualified applicants of one race and not eough of another. Cabranes urged the Supreme Court to consider the question, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari on January 9, 2009. The Supreme Court reviewed the decision to dimsiss the suit, reversed it, and took the unusual step of granting judgment for the firefighters.
Arar v. Ashcroft, 532 F.3d 157 (2d Cir. 2008): In an action brought by a dual citizen of Canada and Syria arising from his alleged detention in the United States, transfer to Syria, and detention and torture in Syria, Cabranes, writing for a unanimous panel, held that the court had jurisdiction over the defendant government officials and that the plaintiff had failed to state a claim under the Torture Victim Prevention Act. Writing for the panel majority, Cabranes affirmed the dismissal of the plaintiff's claims brought under Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), on the grounds that (1) an
alternative remedial scheme precluded recognition of the claims, and (2) special factors counseled hesitation in creating a new and freestanding Bivens remedy.
In re Terrorist Bombings (Fourth Amendment Challenges), 552 F.3d 157 (2d Cir. 2008): Affirming the convictions of Al Qaeda terrorists for their involvement in the bombing of the American Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Cabranes held, as a matter offirst impression, that the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement does not govern searches of U.S. citizens conducted abroad by U.S. agents; such searches need only satisfy the Fourth Amendment's requirement of reasonableness. Cabranes
also held that a district court's ex parte, in camera evaluation of evidence submitted by the government in opposition to a suppression motion is appropriate when national security considerations weigh in favor of maintaining the confidentiality of that evidence.
In re Terrorist Bombings (Fifth Amendment Challenges) 552 F.3d 177 (2d Cir. 2008): Considering the motions to suppress statements made overseas to U.S. and non-U.S. officials by defendants convicted of participation in the bombing of American Embassies in East Africa, Cabranes held that oral warnings provided by a federal prosecutor were sufficient to apprise the defendants of their Miranda rights insofar as they had any such rights. In addition, Cabranes held that defendants' 14-day incommunicado detention in Kenyan custody did not render their post-warning statements involuntary and that, in order to reopen
suppression proceedings, the government is not required to offer a reasonable justification for not having presented evidence at an earlier proceeding.
SEC v. Dorozhko, 574 F.3d 42 (2d Cir. 2009): Writing for a unanimous panel, Cabranes held that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission could sue a computer hacker under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 even though the defendant was neither a fiduciary nor corporate insider, so long as the theory of fraud was an affirmative misrepresentation in connection with the purchase or sale of a security, rather than the violation of a duty to disclose the basis for a trade.
In re N.Y. Times Co., 577 F.3d 401 (2d Cir. 2009): Cabranes, writing for a unanimous panel, held that neither the First Amendment nor the common law right of access entitled the New York Times and other media companies to review wiretap applications that were sealed pursuant to a federal statute, where the media companies had not met the statutory threshold of “good cause.” The wiretap applications were submitted and approved as part of a federal investigation of the “Emperor’s Club,” a prostitution ring linked to the former Governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer.
Henry v. Ricks, 578 F.3d 134 (2d Cir. 2009): Writing for a unanimous panel, Cabranes held that a ruling of the New York Court of Appeals that affected the elements of depraved indifference murder under New York law did not apply retroactively in a state prisoner’s habeas petition. Notably, Cabranes held that the Due Process Clause did not require the retroactive application of a change in state criminal law.
United States v. Ray, 578 F.3d 184 (2d Cir. 2009): Considering a speedy-trial challenge to a sentence imposed 15 years after conviction, Cabranes, writing for a unanimous panel, held that the Speedy Trial Clause of the Sixth Amendment applies to trials only, not to sentencing proceedings. Although the Sixth Amendment was inapplicable to the appellant’s sentencing, Cabranes held that the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment did apply to sentencing proceedings. Because the 15-year delay in sentencing was not justified by any legitimate reason and was prejudicial, the sentence violated the Due Process Clause.
United States v. Rigas, 583 F.3d 108 (2d Cir. 2009): Writing for a unanimous panel, Cabranes upheld the sentences imposed on John J. Rigas and Timothy J. Rigas, the former CEO and CFO of Adelphia Communications Corp, which was among the largest U.S. cable companies before its collapse in an accounting scandal. Cabranes rejected arguments that the sentences were “substantively unreasonable,” and described that standard as akin to a “manifest-injustice” or a “shocks-the-conscience” standard. In other words, wrote Cabranes, appellate review of the substance of a sentence “provide[s] a backstop for those few cases that, although procedurally correct, would nonetheless damage the administration of justice because the sentence imposed was shockingly high, shockingly low, or otherwise unsupportable as a matter of law.”
Selevan v. New York Thruway Authority, 584 F.3d 82 (2d Cir. 2009): Cabranes, writing for a unanimous panel, held that plaintiffs, who challenged an interstate highway toll policy that afforded a discount to citizens of Grand Island, New York stated claims under several provisions of the Constitution, including the “dormant” Commerce Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Cabranes rejected the New York Thruway Authority’s argument that its action was not subject to scrutiny under the dormant Commerce Clause because it was a “market participant,” and the opinion established that dormant Commerce Clause challenges to highway toll policies must be analyzed under the factors set forth in the Supreme Court’s opinion in Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. County of Kent, 510 U.S. 355, 369 (1994). Cabranes also held that one of the plaintiffs, who was a United States citizen residing in Canada, could not state a claim under the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV, which, he explained, was designed to integrate the several states into coherent whole and did not afford protection to residents of foreign countries.
Myth and Reality of University Trusteeship in the Post-Enron Era, 76 Fordham Law Review 955 (2007) (The Robert L. Levine Distinguished Lecture of 2007)
Our Imperial Criminal Procedure: Problems in the Extraterritorial Application of U.S. Constitutional Law, 118 Yale Law Journal 1660 (2009) (The Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Lecture, New York County Lawyers’ Association, 2008)
The Costs of Judging Judges by the Numbers, 28 Yale Law and Policy Review 313 (2010) (with Marin K. Levy and Kate Stith)
, the Lafayette S. Foster Professor of Law and former Acting Dean (2009) at Yale Law School
and Cabranes’s co-author of Fear of Judging: Sentencing Guidelines in the Federal Courts (University of Chicago, 1998). They are the parents of four children: Jennifer Cabranes Braceras, a lawyer in Massachusetts, and Amy Cabranes, Director of Development of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust
, both born to Jose Cabranes's first marriage, to Susan Feibush; Alejo Cabranes, a graduate of Dartmouth College
and recently enrolled at Columbia Law School
; and Benjamin Jose Cabranes, an undergraduate at Dartmouth.
Kate Stith-Cabranes is a native of St. Louis, Missouri, and a graduate of Dartmouth College
and Harvard Law School
. She clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Byron R. White. She is a former Assistant United States Attorney of the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Kate Stith-Cabranes served for eleven years as a trustee of Dartmouth College.
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...
. Formerly a practicing lawyer, government official, and law teacher, he was the first Puerto Rican
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
appointed to a federal judgeship in the continental United States (1979).
Background
Cabranes was born in Mayagüez, Puerto RicoMayagüez, Puerto Rico
Mayagüez is the eighth-largest municipality of Puerto Rico. Originally founded as "Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria" it is also known as "La Sultana del Oeste" , "Ciudad de las Aguas Puras" , or "Ciudad del Mangó"...
into a family of educators; both his mother and father were school teachers. Both parents were educated in Puerto Rico's public schools and at the then newly founded University of Puerto Rico in the first decades of the Twentieth Century, part of the first generation of Puerto Ricans educated under the American flag after Spain's transfer of the island to the United States following the Spanish-American War
Puerto Rican Campaign
The Puerto Rican Campaign was an American military sea and land operation on the island of Puerto Rico during the Spanish–American War. The offensive began on May 12, 1898, when the United States Navy attacked the archipelago’s capital, San Juan. Though the damage inflicted on the city was minimal,...
(1898).
José Cabranes's mother, Carmen López Cabranes, was born in Humacao, PR, in the southeastern part of the island, and graduated with a teaching degree from the University of Puerto Rico in 1930. After graduation, Mrs. Cabranes worked as a grammar school teacher, and for a period during the Second World War, as director of the San Juan school lunch program. In 1946, she moved with her family to the South Bronx, where her husband had been recruited by the National Council of Jewish Women to become the executive director of Melrose House, a settlement house that had historically served Jewish immigrants, but was then principally serving its neighborhood’s recently-arrived Puerto Rican population.
Mrs. Cabranes became an editor of Spanish-language publications for McGraw-Hill, and was the production editor of the journals of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
While living in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s, Carmen Cabranes was involved in politics, participating in John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign and Robert F. Kennedy’s 1964 senatorial campaign. She worked closed at her husband’s side in the cultural, civic and religious leadership of the Puerto Rican community in New York.
The couple retired to Santurce, Puerto Rico, in 1965, where Mrs. Cabranes was briefly the editor of the industrial guide of Puerto Rico’s Economic Development Administration. She was active in pro-statehood politics, participating exuberantly in mass rallies well into her 90's. She died in San Juan in 2006 at the age of 96.
José A. Cabranes’s father, Manuel Cabranes, was born in Toa Alta, PR, a rural town in the hills of the island’s north-central region, and began his career as a rural school teacher in the countryside around Toa Alta. In time he became a teacher in the island’s capital city and principal of the Rafael M. de Labra School in Santurce, PR. In 1931, he and two other Puerto Rican teachers were selected for graduate training fellowships in the continental United States in the newly-developing professional field of social work, thereby becoming the first professionally trained social workers in Puerto Rico. Returning from graduate work at Fordham University in 1933, Manuel Cabranes served as a supervisor of social work in several of the reconstruction programs of the territorial government of the New Deal era (1934–1940), organizing and directing the territory’s first program of probation and parole (1934–1936) and later, in Mayaguez, serving as director of the Escuela Industrial Para Niños (Industrial School for Boys), one of the first “reform schools” on the island (1940–1942).
Manuel Cabranes was a founder of the probation and parole office of the island’s federal court, serving from 1942 to 1946 as Chief Probation Officer of the U.S. District Court in Puerto Rico.
He was serving in the federal court of Puerto Rico when he was recruited to become director of Melrose House in the South Bronx, part of the first airborne migration to New York City in the post-war era. José Cabranes and an older brother, Manuel A., studied at St. Anslem’s School in the South Bronx, and later, in the public schools of Flushing, Queens.
Manuel Cabranes in 1948 was appointed the first director of the office of the government of Puerto Rico in New York City by Gov. Jesús T. Piñero
Jesus T. Piñero
Jesús Toribio Piñero Jiménez was the first native Puerto Rican to be appointed governor of Puerto Rico by the Government of the United States.-Early years:...
, and also served for several years under the island’s first elected governor, Luis Muñoz Marín
Luis Muñoz Marín
Don José Luis Alberto Muñoz Marín was a Puerto Rican poet, journalist, and politician. Regarded as the "father of modern Puerto Rico," he was the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico. Muñoz Marín was the son of Luis Muñoz Rivera, a renowned autonomist leader...
. As the principal Puerto Rican Government spokesman for the mass of Puerto Ricans who had recently migrated to New York, he was called upon to defend them when attacked by opponents of the migration, including major newspapers.
The government of Puerto Rico office headed by Manuel Cabranes in New York was attacked in November 1950 by Puerto Rican Nationalists who simultaneously attempted to assassinate President Harry Truman at Blair House in Washington and Governor Muñoz Marín
Luis Muñoz Marín
Don José Luis Alberto Muñoz Marín was a Puerto Rican poet, journalist, and politician. Regarded as the "father of modern Puerto Rico," he was the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico. Muñoz Marín was the son of Luis Muñoz Rivera, a renowned autonomist leader...
in San Juan. The two home-made bombs hurled at the New York office failed to explode.
In 1951, Manuel Cabranes began to serve in New York City Government
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where he served as Consultant to the Commissioner of Welfare and was active in the civic life of New York’s Puerto Rican community and a regular contributor on cultural affairs in the city’s Spanish-language newspapers, El Diario de Nueva York and La Prensa. He was a leading Roman Catholic layman, serving the Archdiocese of New York for many years as Chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Feast of St. John the Baptist, the annual religious celebration of the feast day of the patron saint of Puerto Rico. In a time before the ready availability of public scholarships for college study, he joined in organizing the New York Puerto Rican Scholarship Fund in 1952, which awarded cash scholarships to support undergraduate and graduate education of New York Puerto Rican youth, and he led the organization for more than a decade.
Manuel Cabranes retired from the New York City government in 1965 and returned with his wife to Puerto Rico, where he taught sociology at the College of the Sacred Heart, in Santurce, and was a regular contributor of articles on various subjects to Spanish-language newspapers and journals. He died in San Juan in 1984 at the age of 79.
José Cabranes graduated from Flushing High School
Flushing High School
Flushing High School is a four-year public high school in Flushing, in the New York City borough of Queens. The school is operated by the New York City Department of Education....
in 1957 and earned a bachelor of arts degree in History from Columbia College in 1961. Between college and law school at Yale
Yale Law School
Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...
, he taught History of Puerto Rico and History of the United States at the Colegio San Ignacio de Loyola, in Rio Piedras, PR. He earned his law degree from Yale in 1965 and was awarded a Kellett Research Fellowship
Kellett Fellowship
The Euretta J. Kellett Fellowship is a prestigious prize awarded to two graduating seniors a year at Columbia College, the main undergraduate school of Columbia University...
from Columbia College and the Humanitarian Trust Studentship in Public International Law from the Faculty Board of Law of the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
to study international law at Queens' College, University of Cambridge, in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. In 1967, he earned his M.Litt. (Masters of Letters) in International Law, and returned to New York city to practice law.
Positions held
Cabranes was an associate in the New York City law firm of Casey, Lane & Mittendorf (now dissolved) from 1967 to 1971, and became avocationally active in public affairs and the civic life of the Puerto Rican community of New York. In the early 1970s he served as a trustee of the Hudson Guild settlement house, in the Chelsea area of Manhattan, and as a director of Citizens Union, a “good government” civic group first organized in the early Twentieth Century. In 1971 he became Chairman of the Board of Directors of ASPIRAASPIRA
ASPIRA of New York is a Hispanic non-profit organization working to foster educational excellence and civic responsibility among young Latinos. ASPIRA youth development clubs, dropout prevention initiatives and after school programs each year serve more than 8,000 young people in the five boroughs...
of New York, an organization that helps inner-city Hispanic youth prepare for higher education, and he was a founding member of the board of directors of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, of which he was later (1975–1980) Chairman.
In 1971, Cabranes left law practice to become Associate Professor of Law at Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
Law School, in Newark
Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...
, where he taught administrative law, conflicts of law and international law. While at Rutgers Law School he continued to live in New York City, and in 1971 was appointed by Mayor John V. Lindsay as a member of the board of directors of a newly-created public corporation, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation.
In 1973, Cabranes took a leave of absence from Rutgers Law School to accept appointment by the Governor of Puerto Rico, Rafael Hernández-Colón, as Special Counsel to the Governor and head of the Commonwealth’s Washington office (later known as the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration
Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration
The Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration represents the Government of Puerto Rico before federal, state, and local governments, promotes the Governor of Puerto Rico's economic and public policy initiatives to achieve a better quality of life for the four million U.S...
).
In 1975, he moved to New Haven, when he was appointed by Yale’s President, Kingman Brewster, Jr., as Yale’s first general counsel. He served as Yale’s general counsel also under Acting President Hanna Holborn Gray
Hanna Holborn Gray
Hanna Holborn Gray , is a historian of political thought in the area of the Renaissance and Reformation, and an emerita professor and former President of the University of Chicago.-Biography:...
(later President of the University of Chicago) and President A. Bartlett Giamatti
A. Bartlett Giamatti
Angelo Bartlett "Bart" Giamatti was the president of Yale University and later the seventh Commissioner of Major League Baseball. Giamatti negotiated the agreement that terminated the Pete Rose betting scandal by permitting Rose to voluntarily withdraw from the sport, avoiding further...
.
While General Counsel of Yale University (1975–1980), Cabranes served in a number of part-time public positions, including as a Public Member of the United States Delegation to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Belgrade, 1977–1978) and as Consultant to Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance (1977–1978). He was elected a member of the Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...
, and published a legislative history of the 1917 law that collectively conferred American citizenship of the people of Puerto Rico, Citizenship and the American Empire (Yale University Press, 1978).
President Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
appointed Cabranes as one of the lay members of the President’s Commission on Mental Health, chaired by Mrs. Rosalyn Carter (1977–1979), and President Carter was reported to have been ready to appoint him to an ambassadorial position. Cabranes’s refusal to accept appointment as Ambassador to Colombia, after the Colombian government’s initial hesitation to accept a Puerto Rican as the American envoy, led to a political firestorm and charges by national Hispanic leaders of the White House’s mismanagement of an appointment they had supported.
Cabranes was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut in December 1979 and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in August 1994.
Throughout his judicial career, Cabranes’s principal avocational activity has been university trusteeship, including the boards of the two American universities of which he is an alumnus. He served as a trustee of Colgate University, in Hamilton, NY, from 1981 to 1989, and as a successor trustee of Yale (Fellow of the Yale Corporation), from 1987-1999. He was the first Roman Catholic to serve on the Yale Corporation. Since 2000, he has been a trustee of Columbia University.
Federal judgeships
In 1979, Cabranes was in the unusual position of being seriously considered for a federal district judgeship in two different states, New York (where he had grown up) and Connecticut (where he was then serving as Yale’s General Counsel). Both Senators Daniel Patrick MoynihanDaniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihan was an American politician and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the United States Senate for New York in 1976, and was re-elected three times . He declined to run for re-election in 2000...
of New York and Abraham A. Ribicoff
Abraham A. Ribicoff
Abraham Alexander Ribicoff was an American Democratic Party politician. He served in the United States Congress, as the 80th Governor of Connecticut and as President John F. Kennedy's Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare...
of Connecticut were reported to have offered to recommend his appointment to President Carter.
Eventually opting for Connecticut, Cabranes accepted the offer of sponsorship of Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff. President Jimmy Carter nominated Cabranes on November 6, 1979 to the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut
United States District Court for the District of Connecticut
The United States District Court for the District of Connecticut is the Federal district court whose jurisdiction is the state of Connecticut. The court has offices in Bridgeport, Hartford and New Haven. Appeals from the court are heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit...
. Cabranes was unanimously confirmed on December 10, 1979, thus becoming the first Puerto Rican to serve as a federal judge in the continental United States.
While serving on the District Court, Cabranes was elected by the Judicial Conference of the United States to the Board of the Federal Judicial Center, the educational arm of the federal judiciary whose chairman is the Chief Justice of the United States. In 1988, Chief Justice Rehnquist named Cabranes as one of five federal judges on the Federal Courts Study Committee, a fifteen-member commission created by Act of Congress to study the administration of the federal courts.
In 1994, it was Senator Moynihan who made possible Cabranes’s elevation to the United States Court of Appeals. Moynihan recommended Cabranes for a New York seat on that Court and on May 24, 1994, President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
nominated him to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...
, based in New York. His nomination was confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate on August 9, 1994. Cabranes thus became the second Puerto Rican named to a U.S. Court of Appeals, after Juan R. Torruella
Juan R. Torruella
Juan R. Torruella is a Puerto Rican jurist, who currently serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He is the first and to date only Hispanic to serve in that court.-Education:...
who had been appointed by Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
in 1984 to the First Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Maine* District of Massachusetts...
. Cabranes also became the first Hispanic judge to serve on the Second Circuit.
Contemporary news accounts reported that in 1993 Cabranes was considered by President Clinton for appointment to the seat on the Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
that ultimately went to Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg was appointed by President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. She is the second female justice and the first Jewish female justice.She is generally viewed as belonging to...
. Had he been appointed, Cabranes would have been the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice. These reports are confirmed in the autobiography of former Clinton administration adviser George Stephanopoulos
George Stephanopoulos
George Robert Stephanopoulos is an American television journalist and a former political advisor.Stephanopoulos is most well known as the chief political correspondent for ABC News – the news division of the broadcast television network ABC – and a co-anchor of ABC News's morning news...
, All Too Human: A Political Education. Newspaper accounts in 1994 likewise reported that Cabranes was considered for the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Harry Blackmun
Harry Blackmun
Harold Andrew Blackmun was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 until 1994. He is best known as the author of Roe v. Wade.- Early years and professional career :...
, which ultimately was filled by Stephen Breyer
Stephen Breyer
Stephen Gerald Breyer is an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, and known for his pragmatic approach to constitutional law, Breyer is generally associated with the more liberal side of the Court....
.
Notable rulings
The following decisions, among others, appear in the 2010 edition of the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary.United States v. Gatlin, 216 F.3d 207 (2d Cir. 2000): Cabranes, writing for the panel in a matter of first appellate impression, held that the district court was without congressionally authorized jurisdiction to try a civilian charged with committing a crime against an individual on a United States military installation abroad. Cabranes concluded that such crimes fell within a "jurisdictional gap" that was created 40 years ago when the Supreme Court ruled that civilians may not be tried in courts martial, and directed that a copy of the opinion be forwarded to members of Congress for their consideration. Following the panel's
decision, Congress enacted a statute remedying the jurisdictional gap.
In re United States (Coppa), 267 F.3d 132 (2d Cir. 2001): Cabranes, writing for the panel and granting the government's petition for mandamus, held that the district court misapplied the teachings of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963) and its progeny in holding that the government was required, as a matter of constitutional law, to disclose all impeachment evidence immediately, pursuant to defendants' request for such, without regard to its materiality and far in advance of trial.
United States v. Thomas, 274 F.3d 655 (2d Cir. 2001) (en banc): Cabranes, writing for the unanimous en banc court, held that the teachings of the Supreme Court's decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000) compel the conclusion that drug type and quantity are elements of the offense under 21 U.S.C. §841 that must be charged in the indictment and submitted to the jury for its finding beyond a reasonable doubt.
United States v. Reyes, 283 F.3d 446 (2d Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 833 (2002): Cabranes, writing for the panel, provided an account of the United States Probation Office functions and held that a probation officer conducting a court-imposed home visit of a convicted person serving a term of federal supervised release is not subject to the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment or to the reasonable suspicion standard applicable to probation searches under United States v. Knight, 534 U.S. 112 (2001). Cabranes also concluded that, contrary to the so-called "stalking horse" theory, the law permits cooperation between probation officers and law enforcement personnel.
United States v. Quinones, 313 F.3d 49 (2d Cir. 2002), reh 'g denied 317 F. 3d 86 (2d Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 540 U.S. 1051 (2003): Cabranes, writing for the panel, held that the district court erred by finding the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 unconstitutional. Cabranes held that, to the extent that the challenge against the statute relied upon the Eighth Amendment, it was foreclosed by the Supreme Court's decision in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976). With respect to the Due Process Clause, Cabranes held that it protected against government infringement upon rights that were so rooted in the traditions and conscience of the people as to be ranked as fundamental, but that the claim that there was a fundamental right to a continued opportunity for exoneration throughout the course of one's natural life was not (as the district court had suggested) a novel issue, and indeed, was foreclosed by relevant Supreme Court precedents.
United States v. Yousef, 327 F.3d 56 (2d Cir. 2003), cert. denied 540 U.S. 933 (2003): Cabranes, writing jointly with other members of the panel, held that the district court erroneously concluded that the acts charged in one of the counts against the defendant were offenses against the law of nations that supported the exercise of universal jurisdiction. Cabranes concluded that customary international law currently does not provide for the prosecution of "terrorist" acts under the universality principle, in part due to the failure of States to achieve anything like consensus on the definition of terrorism. Cabranes nonetheless held that prosecution and conviction of the defendant on the count in question was both consistent with and required by the United States' treaty obligations and domestic laws.
Flores v. Southern Peru Copper Corporation, 343 F.3d 140 (2d Cir. 2003): Cabranes, writing for the panel, held that customary international law, for the violation of which an alien has a private right of action under Alien Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1350, is limited to those clear and unambiguous rules by which states universally abide, or to which they accede, out of a sense of legal obligation and mutual concern. Cabranes concluded that the rights to life and health are insufficiently definite to constitute rules of customary international law and that plaintiffs, who alleged that Peruvian operations of an American
mining company had caused severe lung disease, have not submitted evidence sufficient to establish that customary international law prohibits intranational pollution.
Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan v. Kerik, 356 F.3d 197 (2d Cir. 2004), cert. denied 125 S. Ct. 655 (2004): Cabranes, writing for the panel, upheld New York's anti-mask statute against constitutional challenge, holding that masks worn by self-described members of an "unincorporated political membership association that advocates on behalf of the white race and the Christian faith" did not constitute expressive conduct entitled to first amendment protection. Cabranes concluded that where a
statute banning conduct imposes a burden on the wearing of an element of an expressive uniform, which element has no independent or incremental expressive value, the first amendment is not implicated.
Jeffreys v. City of New York, 426 F.3d 549 (2d Cir. 2005): Cabranes, writing for the panel, affirmed a district court's dismissal of a suit alleging excessive force on the part of New York police officers. Cabranes held that, notwithstanding the general rule that district courts may not weigh evidence or assess the credibility of witnesses at the summary judgment stage, a district court may grant summary judgment where a plaintiff relies almost exclusively on his own testimony and that testimony is "so replete with inconsistencies and improbabilities" that no reasonable juror would undertake the suspension of disbelief
necessary to credit he allegations made in the complaint.
Hayden v. Pataki, 449 F.3d 305 (2d Cir. 2006) (en banc): Cabranes, writing for a majority of the en banc court, held that section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 42 U.S.C. § 1973, did not extend to a New York statute that disenfranchised currently incarcerated felons and parolees, N.Y. Elec. Law §5-106. Cabranes held that Congress did not intend to include prisoner disenfranchisement provisions of the type adopted by New York within the coverage of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and that Congress made no clear statement of an intent to modify the federal balance by applying the Voting Rights Act to these provisions.
Iqbal v. Hasty, 490 F.3d 143 (2d Cir. 2007): In a concurring opinion, Cabranes urged the Supreme Court to revisit and clarify its precedents on pleading standards in order to determine whether they strike the right balance between the need to deter unlawful conduct and the dangers of exposing public officials to burdensome litigation. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the adequacy of the pleadings in this case. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 128 S.Ct. 2931 (2008).
Mora v. New York, 524 F.3d 183 (2d Cir. 2008): Cabranes, writing for a unanimous panel on a question of first impression, held that the requirement of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations that a detained alien be informed of the availability of consular notification and access did not establish a right that could be vindicated in a civil rights action for damages. He also concluded that the detention of an alien without being informed of the availability of consular notification and access did not amount to a tort in violation of customary international law cognizable under the Alien Tort Statute.
Ricci v. DeStefano
Ricci v. DeStefano
Ricci v. DeStefano, 129 S. Ct. 2658, 2671, 174 L. Ed. 2d 490 is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States arising from a lawsuit brought against the city of New Haven, Connecticut by twenty city firefighters alleging that the city discriminated against them with regard to promotions...
, 530 F.3d 88 (2d Cir 2008): In a dissenting opinion joined by five other members of the 13-member court, Cabranes objected to the perfunctory affirmance of an award of summary judgment to the defendants in a civil rights action. Cabranes dissented from the denial of en banc rehearing of this case, observing that the appeal raised important questions of first impression regarding the application of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and Title VII's prohibition on discriminatory employment practices-primarily, whether a city employer may disregard the results of a qualifying employment examination, which was carefully constructed to ensure race-neutrality, on the ground that the results of that examination yielded too many qualified applicants of one race and not eough of another. Cabranes urged the Supreme Court to consider the question, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari on January 9, 2009. The Supreme Court reviewed the decision to dimsiss the suit, reversed it, and took the unusual step of granting judgment for the firefighters.
Arar v. Ashcroft, 532 F.3d 157 (2d Cir. 2008): In an action brought by a dual citizen of Canada and Syria arising from his alleged detention in the United States, transfer to Syria, and detention and torture in Syria, Cabranes, writing for a unanimous panel, held that the court had jurisdiction over the defendant government officials and that the plaintiff had failed to state a claim under the Torture Victim Prevention Act. Writing for the panel majority, Cabranes affirmed the dismissal of the plaintiff's claims brought under Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), on the grounds that (1) an
alternative remedial scheme precluded recognition of the claims, and (2) special factors counseled hesitation in creating a new and freestanding Bivens remedy.
In re Terrorist Bombings (Fourth Amendment Challenges), 552 F.3d 157 (2d Cir. 2008): Affirming the convictions of Al Qaeda terrorists for their involvement in the bombing of the American Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Cabranes held, as a matter offirst impression, that the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement does not govern searches of U.S. citizens conducted abroad by U.S. agents; such searches need only satisfy the Fourth Amendment's requirement of reasonableness. Cabranes
also held that a district court's ex parte, in camera evaluation of evidence submitted by the government in opposition to a suppression motion is appropriate when national security considerations weigh in favor of maintaining the confidentiality of that evidence.
In re Terrorist Bombings (Fifth Amendment Challenges) 552 F.3d 177 (2d Cir. 2008): Considering the motions to suppress statements made overseas to U.S. and non-U.S. officials by defendants convicted of participation in the bombing of American Embassies in East Africa, Cabranes held that oral warnings provided by a federal prosecutor were sufficient to apprise the defendants of their Miranda rights insofar as they had any such rights. In addition, Cabranes held that defendants' 14-day incommunicado detention in Kenyan custody did not render their post-warning statements involuntary and that, in order to reopen
suppression proceedings, the government is not required to offer a reasonable justification for not having presented evidence at an earlier proceeding.
SEC v. Dorozhko, 574 F.3d 42 (2d Cir. 2009): Writing for a unanimous panel, Cabranes held that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission could sue a computer hacker under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 even though the defendant was neither a fiduciary nor corporate insider, so long as the theory of fraud was an affirmative misrepresentation in connection with the purchase or sale of a security, rather than the violation of a duty to disclose the basis for a trade.
In re N.Y. Times Co., 577 F.3d 401 (2d Cir. 2009): Cabranes, writing for a unanimous panel, held that neither the First Amendment nor the common law right of access entitled the New York Times and other media companies to review wiretap applications that were sealed pursuant to a federal statute, where the media companies had not met the statutory threshold of “good cause.” The wiretap applications were submitted and approved as part of a federal investigation of the “Emperor’s Club,” a prostitution ring linked to the former Governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer.
Henry v. Ricks, 578 F.3d 134 (2d Cir. 2009): Writing for a unanimous panel, Cabranes held that a ruling of the New York Court of Appeals that affected the elements of depraved indifference murder under New York law did not apply retroactively in a state prisoner’s habeas petition. Notably, Cabranes held that the Due Process Clause did not require the retroactive application of a change in state criminal law.
United States v. Ray, 578 F.3d 184 (2d Cir. 2009): Considering a speedy-trial challenge to a sentence imposed 15 years after conviction, Cabranes, writing for a unanimous panel, held that the Speedy Trial Clause of the Sixth Amendment applies to trials only, not to sentencing proceedings. Although the Sixth Amendment was inapplicable to the appellant’s sentencing, Cabranes held that the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment did apply to sentencing proceedings. Because the 15-year delay in sentencing was not justified by any legitimate reason and was prejudicial, the sentence violated the Due Process Clause.
United States v. Rigas, 583 F.3d 108 (2d Cir. 2009): Writing for a unanimous panel, Cabranes upheld the sentences imposed on John J. Rigas and Timothy J. Rigas, the former CEO and CFO of Adelphia Communications Corp, which was among the largest U.S. cable companies before its collapse in an accounting scandal. Cabranes rejected arguments that the sentences were “substantively unreasonable,” and described that standard as akin to a “manifest-injustice” or a “shocks-the-conscience” standard. In other words, wrote Cabranes, appellate review of the substance of a sentence “provide[s] a backstop for those few cases that, although procedurally correct, would nonetheless damage the administration of justice because the sentence imposed was shockingly high, shockingly low, or otherwise unsupportable as a matter of law.”
Selevan v. New York Thruway Authority, 584 F.3d 82 (2d Cir. 2009): Cabranes, writing for a unanimous panel, held that plaintiffs, who challenged an interstate highway toll policy that afforded a discount to citizens of Grand Island, New York stated claims under several provisions of the Constitution, including the “dormant” Commerce Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Cabranes rejected the New York Thruway Authority’s argument that its action was not subject to scrutiny under the dormant Commerce Clause because it was a “market participant,” and the opinion established that dormant Commerce Clause challenges to highway toll policies must be analyzed under the factors set forth in the Supreme Court’s opinion in Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. County of Kent, 510 U.S. 355, 369 (1994). Cabranes also held that one of the plaintiffs, who was a United States citizen residing in Canada, could not state a claim under the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV, which, he explained, was designed to integrate the several states into coherent whole and did not afford protection to residents of foreign countries.
Notable publications
Cabranes is the author of Citizenship and The American Empire (Yale 1979), a legislative history of the United States citizenship of the people of Puerto Rico, and (with Kate Stith), Fear of Judging: Sentencing Guidelines in the Federal Courts (University of Chicago Press, 1998).Recent publications & lectures
International Law by Consent of the Governed, 42 Valparaiso Law Review 119 (2007) (Indiana Supreme Court Lecture of 2006)Myth and Reality of University Trusteeship in the Post-Enron Era, 76 Fordham Law Review 955 (2007) (The Robert L. Levine Distinguished Lecture of 2007)
Our Imperial Criminal Procedure: Problems in the Extraterritorial Application of U.S. Constitutional Law, 118 Yale Law Journal 1660 (2009) (The Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Lecture, New York County Lawyers’ Association, 2008)
The Costs of Judging Judges by the Numbers, 28 Yale Law and Policy Review 313 (2010) (with Marin K. Levy and Kate Stith)
Awards & recognition
Among the many awards received by Cabranes are the following:- John Jay Award from Columbia University (1991)
- Connecticut Bar Association Henry J. Naruk Judiciary Award (1993)
- Gavel Award (Certificate of Merit) of the American Bar Association (1999)
- Federal Bar Council's Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence (2000)
Family
Cabranes is married to Kate Stith-CabranesKate Stith
Kate Stith is the Lafayette S. Foster Professor of Law and the former acting-Dean of Yale Law School. Her appointment was announced on March 23, 2009 by Yale University President Richard Levin, when former dean Harold Koh was nominated to serve as Legal Adviser of the Department of State...
, the Lafayette S. Foster Professor of Law and former Acting Dean (2009) at Yale Law School
Yale Law School
Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...
and Cabranes’s co-author of Fear of Judging: Sentencing Guidelines in the Federal Courts (University of Chicago, 1998). They are the parents of four children: Jennifer Cabranes Braceras, a lawyer in Massachusetts, and Amy Cabranes, Director of Development of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust
Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust
The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust is a renowned holocaust museum in Los Angeles, California.-History:The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust is the oldest holocaust museum in the United States of America. In 1961 at Hollywood High School, a group of holocaust survivors taking English as a...
, both born to Jose Cabranes's first marriage, to Susan Feibush; Alejo Cabranes, a graduate of Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
and recently enrolled at Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law schools in the United States. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University in New York City. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in...
; and Benjamin Jose Cabranes, an undergraduate at Dartmouth.
Kate Stith-Cabranes is a native of St. Louis, Missouri, and a graduate of Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
and Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
. She clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Byron R. White. She is a former Assistant United States Attorney of the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Kate Stith-Cabranes served for eleven years as a trustee of Dartmouth College.
See also
- Bill Clinton Supreme Court candidatesBill Clinton Supreme Court candidatesPresident Bill Clinton made two appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States, both during his first term.On March 19, 1993, Associate Justice Byron White announced his retirement , effective at the end of the Supreme Court's 1992-1993 term...
- List of famous Puerto Ricans