The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in

case citation Case citation is a system used by legal professionals to identify past court case decisions, either in series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a neutral style that identifies a decision regardless of where it is reported. Case c ...

s, S.D.N.Y.) is a federal trial court whose geographic jurisdiction encompasses eight counties of the State of New York. Two of these are in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

: New York (Manhattan) and

Bronx The Bronx ( ) is the northernmost of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It shares a land border with Westchester County, New York, West ...

; six are in the

Hudson Valley The Hudson Valley or Hudson River Valley comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. The region stretches from the Capital District (New York), Capital District includi ...

: Westchester, Putnam, Rockland, Orange, Dutchess, and Sullivan. Appeals from the Southern District of New York are taken to the

United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (in case citations, 2d Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. Its territory covers the states of Connecticut, New York (state), New York, and Vermont, and it has ap ...

(except for

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

claims and claims against the U.S. government under the Tucker Act, which are appealed to the Federal Circuit). Because it covers

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

, the Southern District of New York has long been one of the most active and influential federal trial courts in the United States. It often has jurisdiction over America's largest financial institutions and prosecution of

white-collar crime The term "white-collar crime" refers to financially motivated, nonviolent or non-directly violent crime committed by individuals, businesses and government professionals. The crimes are believed to be committed by middle- or upper-class indivi ...

and other federal crimes. Because of its age, being the oldest federal court in the history of the United States, great influence, described as "the preeminent trial court in the nation", and its strong independence, it is

colloquially Colloquialism (also called ''colloquial language'', ''colloquial speech'', ''everyday language'', or ''general parlance'') is the linguistic style used for casual and informal communication. It is the most common form of speech in conversation am ...

called the "Mother Court", or the "Sovereign District of New York." The district itself has had several prominent judges on its bench, including Learned Hand, Michael Mukasey, and Sonia Sotomayor, and many of the U.S. attorneys for the district have been prominent American legal and political figures, such as Elihu Root, Henry L. Stimson, Robert Morgenthau,

Rudy Giuliani Rudolph William Louis Giuliani ( , ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and Disbarment, disbarred lawyer who served as the 107th mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney ...

, James Comey, Michael J. Garcia, and

Preet Bharara Preetinder Singh Bharara (; born October 13, 1968) is an Indian American lawyer and former federal prosecutor who served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. As of 2025, he is a partner at the ...

Jurisdiction

The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York encompasses the counties of New York, Bronx, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Dutchess, and Sullivan and draws jurors from those counties. The Court also shares

concurrent jurisdiction Concurrent jurisdiction exists where two or more courts from different systems simultaneously have jurisdiction over a specific case. United States In the United States, state courts are presumed to have concurrent jurisdiction in federal matt ...

over the waters of the counties of Kings, Nassau, Queens, Richmond, and Suffolk with the

United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York The United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (in case citations, E.D.N.Y.) is the United States district court, federal district court whose territorial jurisdiction spans five List of counties in New York, counties in ...

. The Court hears cases in

, White Plains, and Poughkeepsie, New York. The United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York represents the United States in civil and criminal litigation in the Court. , the

United States Attorney United States attorneys are officials of the U.S. Department of Justice who serve as the chief federal law enforcement officers in each of the 94 U.S. federal judicial districts. Each U.S. attorney serves as the United States' chief federal ...

is Matthew Podolsky. The court sits in the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse and Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse, both in

, and in the Charles L. Brieant Jr. Federal Building and Courthouse in White Plains.

History

The United States District Court for the District of New York was one of the original 13 courts established by the

Judiciary Act of 1789 The Judiciary Act of 1789 (ch. 20, ) was a United States federal statute enacted on September 24, 1789, during the first session of the First United States Congress. It established the federal judiciary of the United States. Article Three of th ...

, 1 Stat. 73, on September 24, 1789. It first sat at the old Merchants Exchange on Broad Street in November 1789, the first federal court to do so.Asbury Dickens, ''A Synoptical Index to the Laws and Treaties of the United States of America'' (1852), p. 386.U.S. District Courts of New York, Legislative history
'' Federal Judicial Center''. The Act of April 9, 1814, 3 Stat. 120, divided the District of New York into Northern and Southern Districts. The subdivision of the district was reportedly instigated by Matthias B. Tallmadge, out of antipathy for fellow district judge William P. Van Ness. These Districts were later further subdivided with the creation of the Eastern District on February 25, 1865 by 13 Stat. 438, and the Western District on May 12, 1900, by 31 Stat. 175. Public Law 95-408 (enacted October 2, 1978) transferred Columbia, Greene, and Ulster counties from the Southern to the Northern district. For the first hundred years of its existence, the case load of the district was dominated first by admiralty cases, and then by a mix of admiralty and

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the deb ...

cases. The primary responsibility for hearing bankruptcy cases has since been transferred to the

United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York The United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York is the United States bankruptcy court within the Southern District of New York. The Southern District of New York is a major venue for bankruptcy, as it has jurisdiction o ...

, with the District Court only reviewing cases already decided by a bankruptcy judge. Since its creation, the Southern District of New York has had over 150 judges, more than any other District. Twenty-one judges from the Southern District of New York have been elevated to the

— Samuel Blatchford, Charles Merrill Hough, Learned Hand, Julius Marshuetz Mayer, Augustus Noble Hand, Martin Thomas Manton, Robert P. Patterson, Harold Medina,

Irving Kaufman Irving Robert Kaufman (June 24, 1910 – February 1, 1992) was a United States federal judge, United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and a United States district judge of the United States Distri ...

, Wilfred Feinberg, Walter R. Mansfield, Murray Gurfein, Lawrence W. Pierce, Pierre N. Leval, John M. Walker Jr., Sonia Sotomayor, Denny Chin, Barrington Daniels Parker Jr., Gerard E. Lynch, Richard J. Sullivan, and Alison Nathan. Blatchford and Sotomayor, after being elevated from the Southern District of New York to serve as Circuit Judges for the Second Circuit, were later elevated to the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...

. The longest serving judge, David Norton Edelstein, served as an active judge for 43 years to the day, and in senior status for an additional six years. Judges of the court have gone on to other high governmental positions. Robert P. Patterson served as Under Secretary of War under President

Franklin Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...

and was Secretary of War under President Harry S. Truman. Louis Freeh served as

Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a United States federal law enforcement agency, and is responsible for its day-to-day operations. The FBI director is appointed for a ...

from September 1993 to June 2001. Michael Mukasey served as the 81st

United States Attorney General The United States attorney general is the head of the United States Department of Justice and serves as the chief law enforcement officer of the Federal government of the United States, federal government. The attorney general acts as the princi ...

under President

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Bush family and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he i ...

Notable cases

* The injury and loss of life claims from the 1912 sinking of the ''Titanic'', the 1915 torpedo attack on the ''Lusitania'' and the 1904 fire aboard the '' General Slocum'' were heard in the S.D.N.Y. * The 1951 espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and the 1949 perjury trial of Alger Hiss were heard in the S.D.N.Y. * Judge John M. Woolsey of the S.D.N.Y. rejected government efforts to censor on obscenity grounds the distribution of

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

's ''Ulysses'' in 1933. * Judge Murray Gurfein of the Court rejected government efforts to enjoin ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' from publishing the '' Pentagon Papers'' in 1971. *

Defamation Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions ...

suits were heard in the S.D.N.Y. against CBS and ''Time'' magazine by General William Westmoreland and

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

i General Ariel Sharon. * Two former Attorneys General of the United States were indicted and tried in the S.D.N.Y. for crimes while in office – Harry Daugherty of the Teapot Dome era and John Mitchell of the Watergate era. Juries were unable to reach verdicts in the two trials against Daugherty in 1926; John Mitchell was acquitted in 1974. * Financial frauds have been prosecuted in the S.D.N.Y., among them the cases against Bernard Madoff, Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, and Sam Bankman-Fried. * The 1990 trial of Imelda Marcos, who was the former First Lady of the Philippines, and who was indicted on charges of

fraud In law, fraud is intent (law), intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Fraud can violate Civil law (common law), civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrato ...

racketeering Racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercion, coercive, fraud, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit. ...

, conspiracy, and

obstruction of justice In United States jurisdictions, obstruction of justice refers to a number of offenses that involve unduly influencing, impeding, or otherwise interfering with the justice system, especially the legal and procedural tasks of prosecutors, investiga ...

. * Bombings: the trials of those accused of the

1998 United States embassy bombings The 1998 United States embassy bombings were attacks that occurred on August 7, 1998. More than 220 people were killed in two nearly simultaneous car bomb, truck bomb explosions in two East African capital cities, one at the Embassy of the Uni ...

in East Africa; those alleged to have been responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Omar Abdel Rahman (known in the press as "The Blind Sheikh"); and those who conspired to carry out the Bojinka plot occurred in the District. More recently, the prosecution arising out of the 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt were each heard in the S.D.N.Y. * '' Bridgeman v. Corel'' (1999) established that exact reproductions of public domain paintings were not subject to

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

protection. * '' Viacom Inc. v. YouTube Inc.'', a $1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube in 2012 on the grounds of alleged

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of Copyright#Scope, works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the c ...

. The DMCA safe harbor law became the main argument in the case. * Prosecution of

Abduwali Muse Abduwali Abdulkadir Muse (born 1990) is a Somali Piracy off the coast of Somalia, pirate. He is the sole survivor of four pirates who Maersk Alabama hijacking, hijacked the in April 2009 and then held Captain Richard Phillips (merchant mariner) ...

, the so-called "Somali Pirate", was heard in the Court in 2010. * The criminal cases against Bess Myerson, Leona Helmsley and Martha Stewart were heard in the S.D.N.Y. as well. * The Deflategate controversy concerning the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National ...

's Tom Brady was heard in the S.D.N.Y. in 2015. * In 2017, ''Hosseinzadeh v. Klein'', concerning the practice of

fair use Fair use is a Legal doctrine, doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to bal ...

in online video content, was heard in the S.D.N.Y. * On December 12, 2018, Judge William H. Pauley III sentenced Michael Cohen – who had served as personal legal counsel to U.S. president

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...

for more than a decade – to "three years in prison and millions in forfeitures, restitution and fines", after pleading guilty to charges including campaign finance violations, tax evasion and committing perjury while under oath before Congress. * Patrick Ho, former Hong Kong Secretary for Home Affairs, bribery And money laundering offenses to Sam Kutesa, former

Minister of Foreign Affairs In many countries, the ministry of foreign affairs (abbreviated as MFA or MOFA) is the highest government department exclusively or primarily responsible for the state's foreign policy and foreign relations, relations, diplomacy, bilateralism, ...

in Uganda and

Idriss Déby Idriss Déby Itno ( '; 18 June 1952 – 20 April 2021) was a Chadian politician and military officer who was the sixth List of heads of state of Chad, president of Chad from 1991 until his death in 2021 during the 2021 Northern Chad offensive, No ...

, former Chad President on behalf of CEFC China Energy. * In 2020, for the '' Ben Feibleman v. Columbia University'' case, a settlement was reached and a student's diploma restored. *In July 2022, Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jennifer Shah pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in the S.D.N.Y. In January 2023, Shah was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison. * Criminal cases against rapper and record producer

Sean Combs Sean John Combs (born November 4, 1969), better known by his stage name Diddy, and formerly Puff Daddy and P. Diddy, is an American rapper, record producer, and record executive. Born in Harlem and raised in Mount Vernon, New York, Mount Ve ...

, and Ghislaine Maxwell, a sex trafficker and confidant of

Jeffrey Epstein Jeffrey Edward Epstein ( , ; January 20, 1953August 10, 2019) was an American financier and child sex offender. Born and raised in New York City, Epstein began his professional career as a teacher at the Dalton School, despite lacking a col ...

. * The '' E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump'' trial, presided over by Senior Judge Lewis Kaplan, was held in April and May of 2023 in which the jury reached a unanimous decision, after deliberating for less than three hours, that Donald J. Trump was liable for

sexual abuse Sexual abuse or sex abuse is abusive sexual behavior by one person upon another. It is often perpetrated using physical force, or by taking advantage of another. It often consists of a persistent pattern of sexual assaults. The offender is re ...

via forcible digital penetration and

defamation Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions ...

. Carroll was awarded a total of $5 million in damages. * Luigi Mangione, suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, has a federal case that is being heard in the S.D.N.Y.

Current judges

Vacancies and pending nominations

Former judges

Chief judges

Succession of seats

References

External links

Official website for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

Official website for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York

Official website for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York

Official website of the Southern District Court Reporters
{{DEFAULTSORT:United States District Court for the Southern District of New York New York (state) law Government buildings in Manhattan White Plains, New York 1814 establishments in New York (state) New York, South Courthouses in New York (state) Courthouses in New York City Courts and tribunals established in 1814