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Gov. Murphy's pick for NJ Supreme Court is former public defender Michael Noriega
By
Nancy Solomon
Published May 15, 2023
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From video by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy's office
By
Nancy Solomon
Published May 15, 2023
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A Peruvian-American lawyer will become the first New Jersey Supreme Court justice to have ever worked as a public defender if he is confirmed by the state Senate.
Gov. Phil Murphy Monday nominated Democrat Michael Noriega of Fanwood to fill the vacant seat on the court left open by the retirement of Barry Albin last year.
“Our Supreme Court has received national recognition for its intellectual rigor and forward-thinking decisions,” Noriega said. “The opportunity to join its ranks is an incredible vote of confidence in the legal career I have built over the last two decades.”
Noriega, 45, is the son of immigrants and grew up in Union City. He worked as a public defender in Essex County for the first five years of his career and currently works on immigration and criminal defense for Bramnick, Rodriguez, Grabas, Arnold & Mangan, LLC., a firm led by state Sen. Jon Bramnick.
Bramnick, R-Union County, serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will vote on whether the state Senate should confirm Noriega. At the announcement held in Trenton, Bramnick said he wholeheartedly supports the nomination.
“I love Mike,” Bramnick said. “No matter where you go, no matter who you talk to, no matter whether it was five minutes ago or 20 years ago, people go like this: ‘Wow, I love Mike.’”
Bramnick said that’s because Noriega has humility and that’s missing from American discourse.
“Well, when you have a Supreme Court justice like Mike Noriega, that may be a path back to a country and a state with more humility and more civility,” Bramnick said.
Noriega is Murphy’s fourth pick for the state Supreme Court. Murphy, a Democrat, has kept the New Jersey tradition of keeping the court ideologically balanced.
Murphy said he has also tried to create experiential diversity on the court by picking one person who previously served as a judge, one who had been a prosecutor, one who’d been a civil rights lawyer and now one who worked as a public defender.
“I wanted someone who didn’t just learn how our judicial system works in a textbook, but had the real-world experience of fighting for their clients and giving them the representation they are entitled to under the law,” Murphy said.
An unwritten rule has slowed down Murphy’s court nominees. State senators in the home county of a nominee are allowed to block that nominee from coming before the state Senate for a confirmation vote. In Noriega’s case, he is likely to glide through with the support of Union County’s Senate Democrats, Nicholas Scutari and Joseph Cryan, both allies of the governor.
The third is Bramnick.
Tagged
new jersey
Politics
Nancy Solomon
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