October 28, 2025 • 29 mins
Judge Denny Chin serves on the US Court of Appeals in New York and he’s an expert on Asian Americans and the law. Every year, he helps to stage reenactments of landmark cases in which Asian Americans fought for their legal and civil rights. Judge Chin speaks with Lidia Jean Kott about his family history and why he became a judge.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Kushkin. Hi, everyone, this is Liddy Jine Kott back with
another special bonus episode of the Chinatown Sting. Earlier in
this season, we heard about how US immigration laws helped
create Chinatowns, especially a law called the Chinese Exclusion Act
passed in eighteen eighty two. This act banned Chinese workers
(00:39):
from entering the country and it prohibited Chinese immigrants from
becoming citizens. And it wasn't until nineteen sixty five that
immigration quotas based on ethnicity were finally banned. In Chinatowns
truly became bustling family neighborhoods. I can't think of anyone
(01:01):
better to talk with about this history than Judge Denny Chin.
Not only did he and his family live through this history,
he now teaches it to law students and lave lawyers.
Judge Denny Chin sits on the United States Court of
Appeals for the Second Circuit, a court that's right below
the Supreme Court. Over the course of his career, Judge
(01:21):
Chen has overseen many high profile trials, including the two
thousand and nine trial against financial fraudster Bernie Maidall. He's
taught courses on Asian American legal history at Fordham University,
Harvard and Yale, and he's the co author of a
forthcoming textbook called Asian Americans and the Law. In addition
(01:44):
to all of this, as you'll hear, Judge Chen has
also written and performed a series of re enactments of
historic cases involving Asian American litigants. I talked to him
about how those litigants have shaped American law and challenged
the status quo. We met in his chambers at the
(02:06):
Thurgood Marshall Courthouse in Lower Manhattan.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
And we are actually sitting in chambers once occupied by
Thurgood Marshall himself when he was a judge on our
court in the sixties. He actually sat in these very chambers,
and it is an incredible honor for me to be
sitting where the great Thurgood Marshall himself once sat.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Judge Chen was born in Hong Kong in nineteen fifty six.
When he was two years old, his family moved to
New York City. When they arrived, they reunited with his grandfather,
who had already been living in Manhattan's Chinatown for decades.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
My grandfather lived in one of those railroad apartments on
Bayard Street and in each room there would be a
single man without his family, but they were sharing the apartment,
and my grandfather, like the others, each month he would
send a money order home to his family in Hong
(03:06):
Kong or China. He came to this country illegally in
nineteen sixteen. Back then there were Chinese exclusion laws on
the books, and you could not come into this country
at all if you were Chinese unless you were the
son of a US citizen. You may have heard the
(03:28):
term paper sons. My grandfather was a paper son. He
bought a piece of paper pretending to be the son
of a US citizen, and that's how he was admitted
to this country. And he worked as a waiter in
Chinese restaurants. He went back to China only two times,
(03:50):
first in the nineteen twenties when he got married, second
in the nineteen thirties when my father was born, and
both times he had to leave his family behind because
of the immigration laws. But in nineteen forty seven he
became a US citizen. And actually on that wall there
(04:11):
I have his naturalization certificate. Oh wow, and he was yeah,
And I believe I'm not one hundred percent sure, but
I believe he was sworn in as a US citizen
in this courthouse, in this building. On the back of it,
it says sworn to an open court. In nineteen forty seven,
there was only one courthouse, and this is it. And
(04:34):
because he became a citizen, and because the immigration laws
were finally relaxed, he was able to bring us here
in nineteen fifty six. My father, my mother, my older sister,
and my younger brother. We came in in fifty six.
And there was a law passed in nineteen fifty three
(04:55):
called the Refugee Relief Act, and it was intended to
help people fleeing from communism, and my parents fled China,
wound up in Hong Kong, where they met and fell
in love, and we were admitted under that statute. So
we were actually political refugees. And when I was a
(05:16):
district judge and occasionally now even as a circuit judge,
I've been able to do the naturalization ceremony to swear
in new American citizens. And I take that certificate off
the wall frame and all, and I show it to
them and I tell them the story of my grandfather
and my parents.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Wow, that's really that's really moving. And your mom was
a garment worker in.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
My mother initially when we were young, she made jewelry
at home. She would be paid by the peace, and
then eventually she became a seamstress in Chinatown garment factories,
and my father was a cook in Chinese restaurants. They
both my mother spoke virtually no English. My father learned
a bit.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Do you have memories of as a kid, like visiting Chinatown,
Like what Chinatown was like and the garment factories and such.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Chinatown was certainly a center of life for both my parents.
I do have memories. Like many Chinese and other Asian families,
we went to language school. My sister and I went
to Chinatown every day after regular school. We'd get on
the subway, go down to Chinatown and take Chinese lessons.
(06:30):
We did that for a while every day. Yeah, we
spoke twice on these originally, but this would have been Cantonese,
and eventually it became once a week. But I remember Chinatown.
Then my grandfather eventually retired, but he would hang out
in a hardware store in Chinatown, like he'd.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Just hang out there, like chatting away with the other
older guys exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
And in fact, when I was at Princeton. I did
my senior thesis on called the Old Ones of Chinatown,
and it was on the Chinatown Senior Citizens and I
took some photos. I did some interviewing of people who
I and different facilities and services in Chinatown. I enjoyed
(07:16):
doing my thesis, but I wound up going to law school,
largely because I didn't know what to do with myself
at the time.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
What did you like about the law and you went
to law school?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Well, you know, I went to law school unsure of
whether I would become a lawyer. I had never met
a lawyer, certainly not a judge as I was growing up.
My parents must have had lawyers to help them with
the process of becoming naturalized, but I never met any
and went to Fordham Law School. That first summer I
(07:51):
got an internship with a judge. In this courthouse, I
saw some trials. I remember a bank robbery trial. The
judge let me draft some opinions which were then edited
by a law clerk. Being at the center of the
administration of justice was something I very much enjoyed, and
(08:15):
I decided that summer that I wanted to come back
one day and be a judge in the courthouse, and then,
of course, many years later, here I am again right
on the edge of China, exactly as a federal judge.
At one point when I was a district judge in
the other building, and right across the street from the
(08:36):
other courthouse is Columbus Park. We played basketball there once
a week at seven point thirty in the morning. We'd
have a pickup game. We'd have prosecutors, law clerks, a
variety of people in New York City playground basketball. There
was one full court, and we wanted to run full court,
(08:56):
but there were senior citizens doing tai chi, there were
other community folks, and there was a little bit of competitiveness. However,
I started getting a lot of attention with the made
Off case and getting nominated to the circuit, and the
Chinatown newspapers would cover this, and at some point the
(09:18):
folks realized who I was, and then they started offering
me tea and cookies in the morning and letting us
have the full court. And that's why.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
After the break, how Judge Chin began writing and performing
reenactments of famous cases brought by Asian Americans. I'm back
(09:54):
with Judge Denny Chin a while back, he and his
wife Kathy Herodicin started writing and staging re enactments of
famous cases involving Asian American litigants. They performed one every
year at the National Asian Pacific Bar Association in New York.
I asked Judge Chin about how exactly these reenactments come together.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
We take excerpts from trial transcripts, judges' opinions, briefs, historical
newspaper articles. We weave those excerpts in with original narration
that Kathy and I wright, and then we present these
with a cast of lawyers who are would be actors,
(10:38):
many lawyers, particularly trial lawyers.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
You know, this part of it is the performance.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Part of it is performing, and so these are performances,
but they raise issues that continue to be important. They
tell compelling stories about the early Asian Americans. For example,
we have a really interesting reenactment about twenty two lud
(11:06):
as an LWD Chinese women, allegedly lued I should say.
They arrived on a boat in San Francisco in the
eighteen eighties, and the California authorities wouldn't let them off
unless they posted a five hundred dollar bond. Each five
(11:26):
hundred dollars was allowed money back then? Why why wouldn't
they let them off? Well, they were women traveling alone,
and they were Chinese, and they were suspected of being lewd,
of being prostitutes. And there was a trial on whether
they were prostitutes. And the case went up to the
Supreme Court of the United States. And it's a case
that is still raising important issues. How was it decided
(11:51):
the women won? Oh that's good, Well, that's good. But
what happened to them? They probably were being trafficked. They
probably were the victims of trafficking. They were represented by
a very good lawyer, a former judge. How could they
afford to hire such a good lawyer?
Speaker 1 (12:12):
The gangs?
Speaker 2 (12:13):
It was probably the trafficker or the gangs who wanted
to protect their investment. But can a state take matters
involving immigration into its own hands when it feels the
federal government isn't doing enough? And that was very much
an issue a few years ago. Now it's the opposite.
(12:37):
Now it's the federal government thinking states are chewing too
much to interfere with the immigration authorities. But you can
see how these legal issues are still important. So how
did I get into this I was a member of
something called the Federal Bar Council in of Court and
(12:58):
when I joined, each month a team led by a
judge would do some kind of presentation. We did the
trial of fl Rosenberg, and incidentally I I played mister
rosen Perk because it was the smallest part, and we
reenacted the sentencing and I had the death sentence imposed
(13:19):
on me, and it was no fun, even though it
was pretend having the death penalty impost on me and
it was It was actually very good for me as
a judge. I was a judge like it. Yeah, I
mean I played the defendant and I had the lawyers
pointing at me and saying I was stupid but not criminal,
that kind of thing, And it gave me some appreciation
(13:42):
of the difficulties of going through the process.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Wow, in a way, like what you're yeah, what you
do with those reenactments is like what we're doing. Did
we trd to do with this podcast, which is taking
the court docs, taking codes from people taking a legal
case and kind of like reenacting it. Understand it.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
We think of it as courtroom theater. There's a lot
of drama in the courtroom, but beyond that, you know,
there are compelling stories about the people, and then there
are important issues that are still important today, whether it's
human trafficking or racial violence. Now, because of all these
reenactments of the Asian American cases, I developed a real
(14:23):
love for Asian American legal history.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Like what have you found is unique about the Asian
American experience and the laws focusing on that.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Well. First of all, even though the numbers of Asian
Americans in the early days the Chinese in the US
population was very, very low, there were lots of cases,
brought quite a few cases all the way to the
Supreme Court. Asian Americans have been at the center of
(14:56):
many many different issues, immigration, citizenship, violence, there were many massacres,
the civil rights cases currently in addition to the pandemic
and the anti Asian violence, affirmative action, and the early
(15:16):
litigants were folks of very limited means, women suspected of
being prostitutes, cooks, laundrymen. One of the first cases to
be studied in con law is the laundryman case. San
Francisco passed the law that if you wanted to run
(15:38):
a laundry, it had to be in a stone or
brick building. You couldn't have it in a wooden building,
ostensibly because of the fear of fires. There was an exception.
You could apply for an exception so that you could
continue to operate your laundry in a wooden building, and
(16:02):
two hundred Chinese applied for the exception. There were many,
many Chinese laundries in San Francisco. Every single one was denied.
There were eighty applications by non Chinese, everyone but one
was granted. The one that was not granted was a woman.
(16:25):
And so it's you know, a law can be discriminatory
as apply even though on its face it appears neutral,
it's applied in a way that is discriminatory. So that
was a very important ruling that the Supreme Court. So
it's very important not just for the Chinese, but for
many You can't take a law that is on its
(16:47):
face neutral and apply it in a discriminatory way. And
it also said that equal protection applies not just to
citizens but to all persons. And even though most all
of these Chinese launchermen were not US citizens, they were
still entitle to the protection of the US Constitution. So
(17:11):
this is a great example compelling stories that there were
actually two laundrymen involved. They had run their laundries for
decades in San Francisco. People limited means, yet they were
bringing these really innovative, creative legal theories. These were important
rights and there were benefits not just for them but
(17:34):
for many, many others. And so, you know, doing the
reenactments helped me really learn this Asian American legal history.
And then at some point I decided that we needed
to have a seminar to teach it. My colleague and
I at Fordham Law School in twenty seventeen developed a
(17:56):
seminar on Asian Americans and the Law. There are now
fourteen or more law schools using our syllabus, at least
as a start, using our reading tearials and offering a
similar summinar on Asian Americans and the Law.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Coming up after the break, Judge ten and I talk
about the Chinese Exclusion Act and the violence it unleashed.
One of the really fun parts of making the season
(18:42):
of the Chinatown Sting was getting to record the movie
and Broadway musical actor Kelly Leong. He's been the voice
of the court docs in the series. When he came in,
it was just clear that we were in the presence
of a talented professional, and we also asked him to
record a portion of the original language of the Chinese
(19:03):
Exclusion Act that Congress passed in eighteen eighty two. I
brought that recording with me when I interviewed Judge Chen,
and I played it for him. Here's that reenactment from
Taly Leon.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Any Chinese person found unlawfully within the United States shall
be caused to be removed. Therefrom to the country from
whence he came by direction of the President of the
United States and at the cost of the United States,
after being brought before some justice judge or commissioner of
a court of the United States and found to be
one not lawfully entitled to be or remain in the
(19:39):
United States.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
And yeah, I guess that's what you think when you
hear those words.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Well, it's very moving to hear the words, and that
person read them very well. The Chinese Exclusion Act of
eighteen eighty two and the subsequent amendments and extensions is
a very important part of Asian American legal history. Why
(20:05):
was this happening, What was driving Congress to pass this.
It's often overlooked that the China towns contributed greatly to
the broader American society as well. You know, the trade
(20:26):
shipping goods back to China, bringing goods from China. There
were all sorts of taxes imposed on the Chinese, and
the Chinese paid, you know, the Chinese contributed. There were
massacres of Chinese gold miners, but many of the early
Chinese gold miners would come in after a location or
(20:50):
a mine had been abandoned by the original miners, and
then they would try to like do the leftovers almost
but they would find ways to get more gold out
of it. And I don't know, and you know, originally
the Chinese were welcomed. There was more curiosity city than
anything else. But then in time these feelings grew. Part
(21:15):
of it was political. When Governor Bigler was running for reelection,
he seized on the Chinese question and he was in California.
He was in California, he was facing reelection and he
used this as a campaign theme. What the Chinese are doing,
They're taking our goal, sending it back, et cetera. You
could see efforts being used, politicians and others using these
(21:42):
things to rally the masses. In the eighteen eighties, many
communities around the country literally drove out all their Chinese residents.
The Chinese were expelled from the towns, and one of
them was Eureka. In California, there were a prince and
(22:06):
professor has done research on this. There were one hundred
it's sixty eight communities at least that drove out all
their Chinese residents, like the West Coast on the West
Coast California, but also further north Seattle, Bellingham, Washington. Wasn't
(22:27):
just the Chinese and Bellingham, it was the South Asians.
Many of them were Sikh, although they were called Hindus
at the time, and in Eureka the numbers vary, but
it was two hundred, three hundred, As many as eight
hundred Chinese were driven out of town.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
What was the driving out? How did the driving out work?
Speaker 3 (22:52):
What was it?
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Several hundred people banned it together but including leaders of
the community, and physically forced them out and put them
on boats and sent them off to San Francisco. Oh well,
many of them were where could they go? And many
of them wound up heading east. There were some lawsuits
brought as a result of Eureka, and there was one
(23:16):
case where I think it was approximately fifty one residents
and merchants. Chinese residents and merchants brought what was essentially
a class action.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Were there class actions already then.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
No, there were class actions back then. There was no
such thing as RUL twenty three of the Federal Rules
of Civil Procedure. So this is yet another example of
creative innovative lawyering. They filled out forms and put in
their individual details and then put them together into one complaint,
and so it literally it was like a class action.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Two of the fifty one who were part of the
complaint were women, and one of them, in her form
put in parentheses woman. She wanted to tell the court
that she was a woman. Now that case was eventually
dismissed and.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
They were asking to be able to stay in Eureka.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
No, they were asking for money damages. But so these
individuals sued damages. And another creative innovative aspect about this,
they were trying to hold the city of Eureka responsible
for failing to control the rioters. Yeah, and they were
asserting this. It failed, but it sent a message that
(24:26):
we're going to fight back, you know. And so there
were many instances of the Chinese being driven out of
the community in Seattle. The Rioters rounded up the Chinese,
brought them down to the wharf. They collected money to
pay for their passages on a boat so that they
(24:47):
could be sent off, and they were even willing to
put in their own money.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
To do this. I guess I'm wondering, of course, your
students are going to, you know, come away with a
lot from the class. But if, like you know, years
down the line, when they're remembering their Asian Americans in
the wall class, if they were to just come away
with like one sentence, their one memory from that class,
what would you want them to hold on to from
the experience.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I think Asian American legal history teaches us a lot
about how the constitution is supposed to work, how sometimes
it works, but unfortunately, how often it doesn't work. It
teaches us that committed, resourceful, courageous people can do a
(25:40):
lot to help make things better.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Yeah, having studied you know, Asian Americans in the law
and seeing how, you know, sometimes cases are decided in
ways in retrospect that seem wrong, or like, how that
makes you think about your role as a judge in
a system that is quite platantly from the textbooks imperfect.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah, our system is imperfect, but I think, based on
thirty one years of being a judge, I think we
usually get things right. It works pretty well. It is
not perfect. Now studying these cases, there are a couple
of things.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
You know.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
One is to be creative and think broadly about things,
but two is scrutinize things. Don't just blindly defer to
the executive branch during interment. I do not believe the
(26:39):
Supreme Court sufficiently put the government to its proof. One
hundred and twenty thousand Japanese Americans on the West coast
right military necessity. We don't have time to individually consider
whether someone is a danger a job, a particular Japanese
(27:03):
person is a danger in terms of espionage and sabotage.
We don't have time to have hearings or individual consideration.
And the Court just accepted the government at its word
instead of pressing back, instead of saying, show us what
(27:23):
are the examples of sabotage? Take away the children, take
away the older people, take away the women. Women really
weren't part of the military then and were less of
a threat. Two thirds of the one hundred and twenty
thousand were American citizens. When you start looking at it
(27:44):
more carefully. Did we actually have the time to give
them hearings and to look at their at least to
do an interview of some kind, And instead the government
took months to build assembly centers and then ten internment camps.
So you know, one lesson is, don't just accept the
(28:05):
government at its word. Put it to its proof. That's appropriate.
And I think we're seeing that these days. Many of
the lower courts, the trial judges are making decisions where
I think they are indeed requiring the government to support
what they are asserting and not just blindly accepting their say.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
So, as I said goodbye to Judge Chin, he stood
up to find something for me. Something He says he
never lets anyone leave his chambers without Everyone.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Should have a pocket constitution.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Uh, thank you. I so appreciate Judge Jenny Chin taking
the time to talk with me. He sits on the
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and
he's the co author of a forthcoming textbook called Asian
Americans and the Law. This episode of the Chinatownsting was
(29:04):
produced by Sonya Gurwit and edited by Julia Barton. It
was engineered by Sarah Bruger. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
Our music was composed by John Sung, with additional music
by Jake Gorski, all voiceover work by Tally Leong. The
Chinatowns Day is a production of Pushkin Industries. To find
(29:25):
more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Lydia gene Cox.
Kushkin. Hi, everyone, this is Liddy Jine Kott back with
another special bonus episode of the Chinatown Sting. Earlier in
this season, we heard about how US immigration laws helped
create Chinatowns, especially a law called the Chinese Exclusion Act
passed in eighteen eighty two. This act banned Chinese workers
(00:39):
from entering the country and it prohibited Chinese immigrants from
becoming citizens. And it wasn't until nineteen sixty five that
immigration quotas based on ethnicity were finally banned. In Chinatowns
truly became bustling family neighborhoods. I can't think of anyone
(01:01):
better to talk with about this history than Judge Denny Chin.
Not only did he and his family live through this history,
he now teaches it to law students and lave lawyers.
Judge Denny Chin sits on the United States Court of
Appeals for the Second Circuit, a court that's right below
the Supreme Court. Over the course of his career, Judge
(01:21):
Chen has overseen many high profile trials, including the two
thousand and nine trial against financial fraudster Bernie Maidall. He's
taught courses on Asian American legal history at Fordham University,
Harvard and Yale, and he's the co author of a
forthcoming textbook called Asian Americans and the Law. In addition
(01:44):
to all of this, as you'll hear, Judge Chen has
also written and performed a series of re enactments of
historic cases involving Asian American litigants. I talked to him
about how those litigants have shaped American law and challenged
the status quo. We met in his chambers at the
(02:06):
Thurgood Marshall Courthouse in Lower Manhattan.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
And we are actually sitting in chambers once occupied by
Thurgood Marshall himself when he was a judge on our
court in the sixties. He actually sat in these very chambers,
and it is an incredible honor for me to be
sitting where the great Thurgood Marshall himself once sat.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Judge Chen was born in Hong Kong in nineteen fifty six.
When he was two years old, his family moved to
New York City. When they arrived, they reunited with his grandfather,
who had already been living in Manhattan's Chinatown for decades.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
My grandfather lived in one of those railroad apartments on
Bayard Street and in each room there would be a
single man without his family, but they were sharing the apartment,
and my grandfather, like the others, each month he would
send a money order home to his family in Hong
(03:06):
Kong or China. He came to this country illegally in
nineteen sixteen. Back then there were Chinese exclusion laws on
the books, and you could not come into this country
at all if you were Chinese unless you were the
son of a US citizen. You may have heard the
(03:28):
term paper sons. My grandfather was a paper son. He
bought a piece of paper pretending to be the son
of a US citizen, and that's how he was admitted
to this country. And he worked as a waiter in
Chinese restaurants. He went back to China only two times,
(03:50):
first in the nineteen twenties when he got married, second
in the nineteen thirties when my father was born, and
both times he had to leave his family behind because
of the immigration laws. But in nineteen forty seven he
became a US citizen. And actually on that wall there
(04:11):
I have his naturalization certificate. Oh wow, and he was yeah,
And I believe I'm not one hundred percent sure, but
I believe he was sworn in as a US citizen
in this courthouse, in this building. On the back of it,
it says sworn to an open court. In nineteen forty seven,
there was only one courthouse, and this is it. And
(04:34):
because he became a citizen, and because the immigration laws
were finally relaxed, he was able to bring us here
in nineteen fifty six. My father, my mother, my older sister,
and my younger brother. We came in in fifty six.
And there was a law passed in nineteen fifty three
(04:55):
called the Refugee Relief Act, and it was intended to
help people fleeing from communism, and my parents fled China,
wound up in Hong Kong, where they met and fell
in love, and we were admitted under that statute. So
we were actually political refugees. And when I was a
(05:16):
district judge and occasionally now even as a circuit judge,
I've been able to do the naturalization ceremony to swear
in new American citizens. And I take that certificate off
the wall frame and all, and I show it to
them and I tell them the story of my grandfather
and my parents.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Wow, that's really that's really moving. And your mom was
a garment worker in.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
My mother initially when we were young, she made jewelry
at home. She would be paid by the peace, and
then eventually she became a seamstress in Chinatown garment factories,
and my father was a cook in Chinese restaurants. They
both my mother spoke virtually no English. My father learned
a bit.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Do you have memories of as a kid, like visiting Chinatown,
Like what Chinatown was like and the garment factories and such.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Chinatown was certainly a center of life for both my parents.
I do have memories. Like many Chinese and other Asian families,
we went to language school. My sister and I went
to Chinatown every day after regular school. We'd get on
the subway, go down to Chinatown and take Chinese lessons.
(06:30):
We did that for a while every day. Yeah, we
spoke twice on these originally, but this would have been Cantonese,
and eventually it became once a week. But I remember Chinatown.
Then my grandfather eventually retired, but he would hang out
in a hardware store in Chinatown, like he'd.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Just hang out there, like chatting away with the other
older guys exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
And in fact, when I was at Princeton. I did
my senior thesis on called the Old Ones of Chinatown,
and it was on the Chinatown Senior Citizens and I
took some photos. I did some interviewing of people who
I and different facilities and services in Chinatown. I enjoyed
(07:16):
doing my thesis, but I wound up going to law school,
largely because I didn't know what to do with myself
at the time.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
What did you like about the law and you went
to law school?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Well, you know, I went to law school unsure of
whether I would become a lawyer. I had never met
a lawyer, certainly not a judge as I was growing up.
My parents must have had lawyers to help them with
the process of becoming naturalized, but I never met any
and went to Fordham Law School. That first summer I
(07:51):
got an internship with a judge. In this courthouse, I
saw some trials. I remember a bank robbery trial. The
judge let me draft some opinions which were then edited
by a law clerk. Being at the center of the
administration of justice was something I very much enjoyed, and
(08:15):
I decided that summer that I wanted to come back
one day and be a judge in the courthouse, and then,
of course, many years later, here I am again right
on the edge of China, exactly as a federal judge.
At one point when I was a district judge in
the other building, and right across the street from the
(08:36):
other courthouse is Columbus Park. We played basketball there once
a week at seven point thirty in the morning. We'd
have a pickup game. We'd have prosecutors, law clerks, a
variety of people in New York City playground basketball. There
was one full court, and we wanted to run full court,
(08:56):
but there were senior citizens doing tai chi, there were
other community folks, and there was a little bit of competitiveness. However,
I started getting a lot of attention with the made
Off case and getting nominated to the circuit, and the
Chinatown newspapers would cover this, and at some point the
(09:18):
folks realized who I was, and then they started offering
me tea and cookies in the morning and letting us
have the full court. And that's why.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
After the break, how Judge Chin began writing and performing
reenactments of famous cases brought by Asian Americans. I'm back
(09:54):
with Judge Denny Chin a while back, he and his
wife Kathy Herodicin started writing and staging re enactments of
famous cases involving Asian American litigants. They performed one every
year at the National Asian Pacific Bar Association in New York.
I asked Judge Chin about how exactly these reenactments come together.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
We take excerpts from trial transcripts, judges' opinions, briefs, historical
newspaper articles. We weave those excerpts in with original narration
that Kathy and I wright, and then we present these
with a cast of lawyers who are would be actors,
(10:38):
many lawyers, particularly trial lawyers.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
You know, this part of it is the performance.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Part of it is performing, and so these are performances,
but they raise issues that continue to be important. They
tell compelling stories about the early Asian Americans. For example,
we have a really interesting reenactment about twenty two lud
(11:06):
as an LWD Chinese women, allegedly lued I should say.
They arrived on a boat in San Francisco in the
eighteen eighties, and the California authorities wouldn't let them off
unless they posted a five hundred dollar bond. Each five
(11:26):
hundred dollars was allowed money back then? Why why wouldn't
they let them off? Well, they were women traveling alone,
and they were Chinese, and they were suspected of being lewd,
of being prostitutes. And there was a trial on whether
they were prostitutes. And the case went up to the
Supreme Court of the United States. And it's a case
that is still raising important issues. How was it decided
(11:51):
the women won? Oh that's good, Well, that's good. But
what happened to them? They probably were being trafficked. They
probably were the victims of trafficking. They were represented by
a very good lawyer, a former judge. How could they
afford to hire such a good lawyer?
Speaker 1 (12:12):
The gangs?
Speaker 2 (12:13):
It was probably the trafficker or the gangs who wanted
to protect their investment. But can a state take matters
involving immigration into its own hands when it feels the
federal government isn't doing enough? And that was very much
an issue a few years ago. Now it's the opposite.
(12:37):
Now it's the federal government thinking states are chewing too
much to interfere with the immigration authorities. But you can
see how these legal issues are still important. So how
did I get into this I was a member of
something called the Federal Bar Council in of Court and
(12:58):
when I joined, each month a team led by a
judge would do some kind of presentation. We did the
trial of fl Rosenberg, and incidentally I I played mister
rosen Perk because it was the smallest part, and we
reenacted the sentencing and I had the death sentence imposed
(13:19):
on me, and it was no fun, even though it
was pretend having the death penalty impost on me and
it was It was actually very good for me as
a judge. I was a judge like it. Yeah, I
mean I played the defendant and I had the lawyers
pointing at me and saying I was stupid but not criminal,
that kind of thing, And it gave me some appreciation
(13:42):
of the difficulties of going through the process.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Wow, in a way, like what you're yeah, what you
do with those reenactments is like what we're doing. Did
we trd to do with this podcast, which is taking
the court docs, taking codes from people taking a legal
case and kind of like reenacting it. Understand it.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
We think of it as courtroom theater. There's a lot
of drama in the courtroom, but beyond that, you know,
there are compelling stories about the people, and then there
are important issues that are still important today, whether it's
human trafficking or racial violence. Now, because of all these
reenactments of the Asian American cases, I developed a real
(14:23):
love for Asian American legal history.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Like what have you found is unique about the Asian
American experience and the laws focusing on that.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Well. First of all, even though the numbers of Asian
Americans in the early days the Chinese in the US
population was very, very low, there were lots of cases,
brought quite a few cases all the way to the
Supreme Court. Asian Americans have been at the center of
(14:56):
many many different issues, immigration, citizenship, violence, there were many massacres,
the civil rights cases currently in addition to the pandemic
and the anti Asian violence, affirmative action, and the early
(15:16):
litigants were folks of very limited means, women suspected of
being prostitutes, cooks, laundrymen. One of the first cases to
be studied in con law is the laundryman case. San
Francisco passed the law that if you wanted to run
(15:38):
a laundry, it had to be in a stone or
brick building. You couldn't have it in a wooden building,
ostensibly because of the fear of fires. There was an exception.
You could apply for an exception so that you could
continue to operate your laundry in a wooden building, and
(16:02):
two hundred Chinese applied for the exception. There were many,
many Chinese laundries in San Francisco. Every single one was denied.
There were eighty applications by non Chinese, everyone but one
was granted. The one that was not granted was a woman.
(16:25):
And so it's you know, a law can be discriminatory
as apply even though on its face it appears neutral,
it's applied in a way that is discriminatory. So that
was a very important ruling that the Supreme Court. So
it's very important not just for the Chinese, but for
many You can't take a law that is on its
(16:47):
face neutral and apply it in a discriminatory way. And
it also said that equal protection applies not just to
citizens but to all persons. And even though most all
of these Chinese launchermen were not US citizens, they were
still entitle to the protection of the US Constitution. So
(17:11):
this is a great example compelling stories that there were
actually two laundrymen involved. They had run their laundries for
decades in San Francisco. People limited means, yet they were
bringing these really innovative, creative legal theories. These were important
rights and there were benefits not just for them but
(17:34):
for many, many others. And so, you know, doing the
reenactments helped me really learn this Asian American legal history.
And then at some point I decided that we needed
to have a seminar to teach it. My colleague and
I at Fordham Law School in twenty seventeen developed a
(17:56):
seminar on Asian Americans and the Law. There are now
fourteen or more law schools using our syllabus, at least
as a start, using our reading tearials and offering a
similar summinar on Asian Americans and the Law.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Coming up after the break, Judge ten and I talk
about the Chinese Exclusion Act and the violence it unleashed.
One of the really fun parts of making the season
(18:42):
of the Chinatown Sting was getting to record the movie
and Broadway musical actor Kelly Leong. He's been the voice
of the court docs in the series. When he came in,
it was just clear that we were in the presence
of a talented professional, and we also asked him to
record a portion of the original language of the Chinese
(19:03):
Exclusion Act that Congress passed in eighteen eighty two. I
brought that recording with me when I interviewed Judge Chen,
and I played it for him. Here's that reenactment from
Taly Leon.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Any Chinese person found unlawfully within the United States shall
be caused to be removed. Therefrom to the country from
whence he came by direction of the President of the
United States and at the cost of the United States,
after being brought before some justice judge or commissioner of
a court of the United States and found to be
one not lawfully entitled to be or remain in the
(19:39):
United States.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
And yeah, I guess that's what you think when you
hear those words.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Well, it's very moving to hear the words, and that
person read them very well. The Chinese Exclusion Act of
eighteen eighty two and the subsequent amendments and extensions is
a very important part of Asian American legal history. Why
(20:05):
was this happening, What was driving Congress to pass this.
It's often overlooked that the China towns contributed greatly to
the broader American society as well. You know, the trade
(20:26):
shipping goods back to China, bringing goods from China. There
were all sorts of taxes imposed on the Chinese, and
the Chinese paid, you know, the Chinese contributed. There were
massacres of Chinese gold miners, but many of the early
Chinese gold miners would come in after a location or
(20:50):
a mine had been abandoned by the original miners, and
then they would try to like do the leftovers almost
but they would find ways to get more gold out
of it. And I don't know, and you know, originally
the Chinese were welcomed. There was more curiosity city than
anything else. But then in time these feelings grew. Part
(21:15):
of it was political. When Governor Bigler was running for reelection,
he seized on the Chinese question and he was in California.
He was in California, he was facing reelection and he
used this as a campaign theme. What the Chinese are doing,
They're taking our goal, sending it back, et cetera. You
could see efforts being used, politicians and others using these
(21:42):
things to rally the masses. In the eighteen eighties, many
communities around the country literally drove out all their Chinese residents.
The Chinese were expelled from the towns, and one of
them was Eureka. In California, there were a prince and
(22:06):
professor has done research on this. There were one hundred
it's sixty eight communities at least that drove out all
their Chinese residents, like the West Coast on the West
Coast California, but also further north Seattle, Bellingham, Washington. Wasn't
(22:27):
just the Chinese and Bellingham, it was the South Asians.
Many of them were Sikh, although they were called Hindus
at the time, and in Eureka the numbers vary, but
it was two hundred, three hundred, As many as eight
hundred Chinese were driven out of town.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
What was the driving out? How did the driving out work?
Speaker 3 (22:52):
What was it?
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Several hundred people banned it together but including leaders of
the community, and physically forced them out and put them
on boats and sent them off to San Francisco. Oh well,
many of them were where could they go? And many
of them wound up heading east. There were some lawsuits
brought as a result of Eureka, and there was one
(23:16):
case where I think it was approximately fifty one residents
and merchants. Chinese residents and merchants brought what was essentially
a class action.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Were there class actions already then.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
No, there were class actions back then. There was no
such thing as RUL twenty three of the Federal Rules
of Civil Procedure. So this is yet another example of
creative innovative lawyering. They filled out forms and put in
their individual details and then put them together into one complaint,
and so it literally it was like a class action.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Two of the fifty one who were part of the
complaint were women, and one of them, in her form
put in parentheses woman. She wanted to tell the court
that she was a woman. Now that case was eventually
dismissed and.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
They were asking to be able to stay in Eureka.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
No, they were asking for money damages. But so these
individuals sued damages. And another creative innovative aspect about this,
they were trying to hold the city of Eureka responsible
for failing to control the rioters. Yeah, and they were
asserting this. It failed, but it sent a message that
(24:26):
we're going to fight back, you know. And so there
were many instances of the Chinese being driven out of
the community in Seattle. The Rioters rounded up the Chinese,
brought them down to the wharf. They collected money to
pay for their passages on a boat so that they
(24:47):
could be sent off, and they were even willing to
put in their own money.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
To do this. I guess I'm wondering, of course, your
students are going to, you know, come away with a
lot from the class. But if, like you know, years
down the line, when they're remembering their Asian Americans in
the wall class, if they were to just come away
with like one sentence, their one memory from that class,
what would you want them to hold on to from
the experience.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I think Asian American legal history teaches us a lot
about how the constitution is supposed to work, how sometimes
it works, but unfortunately, how often it doesn't work. It
teaches us that committed, resourceful, courageous people can do a
(25:40):
lot to help make things better.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Yeah, having studied you know, Asian Americans in the law
and seeing how, you know, sometimes cases are decided in
ways in retrospect that seem wrong, or like, how that
makes you think about your role as a judge in
a system that is quite platantly from the textbooks imperfect.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah, our system is imperfect, but I think, based on
thirty one years of being a judge, I think we
usually get things right. It works pretty well. It is
not perfect. Now studying these cases, there are a couple
of things.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
You know.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
One is to be creative and think broadly about things,
but two is scrutinize things. Don't just blindly defer to
the executive branch during interment. I do not believe the
(26:39):
Supreme Court sufficiently put the government to its proof. One
hundred and twenty thousand Japanese Americans on the West coast
right military necessity. We don't have time to individually consider
whether someone is a danger a job, a particular Japanese
(27:03):
person is a danger in terms of espionage and sabotage.
We don't have time to have hearings or individual consideration.
And the Court just accepted the government at its word
instead of pressing back, instead of saying, show us what
(27:23):
are the examples of sabotage? Take away the children, take
away the older people, take away the women. Women really
weren't part of the military then and were less of
a threat. Two thirds of the one hundred and twenty
thousand were American citizens. When you start looking at it
(27:44):
more carefully. Did we actually have the time to give
them hearings and to look at their at least to
do an interview of some kind, And instead the government
took months to build assembly centers and then ten internment camps.
So you know, one lesson is, don't just accept the
(28:05):
government at its word. Put it to its proof. That's appropriate.
And I think we're seeing that these days. Many of
the lower courts, the trial judges are making decisions where
I think they are indeed requiring the government to support
what they are asserting and not just blindly accepting their say.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
So, as I said goodbye to Judge Chin, he stood
up to find something for me. Something He says he
never lets anyone leave his chambers without Everyone.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Should have a pocket constitution.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Uh, thank you. I so appreciate Judge Jenny Chin taking
the time to talk with me. He sits on the
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and
he's the co author of a forthcoming textbook called Asian
Americans and the Law. This episode of the Chinatownsting was
(29:04):
produced by Sonya Gurwit and edited by Julia Barton. It
was engineered by Sarah Bruger. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
Our music was composed by John Sung, with additional music
by Jake Gorski, all voiceover work by Tally Leong. The
Chinatowns Day is a production of Pushkin Industries. To find
(29:25):
more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Lydia gene Cox.
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