HOW MUCH OF A TRAILBLAZER [MY GRANDFATHER] WAS.”
- JUDGE DENNY CHIN
JUDGE CHIN’S OLDER SISTER DIANE, HIS
MOTHER SUK YIN CHIN HOLDING HIS BROTHER DALY, AND HIS FATHER, BAKH THEUN CHIN, HOLDING THE FUTURE
JUDGE. THE PHOTO WAS TAKEN IN HONG KONG IN
1955, A YEAR BEFORE THE FAMILY IMMIGRATED TO THE UNITED STATES.
APPRECIATE
“NOW I
19
His recent elevation to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit—making him the only active Asian American federal appellate judge in the country—holds special signifi cance for many, from the Chinatown community surrounding the courthouse to the minority law students he mentors to the litigants who come to court seeking justice. He takes all of those responsibilities seriously. “Everyone should get a fair shot.
Everyone should have a full and fair oppor- tunity to be heard. I’ve always believed that I got a fair shot, and that aff ects who I am now, both as a person and as a judge.” Judge Chin is often described as a
trailblazer. He insists that his grandfather is more worthy of the designation. “Growing up, I never considered my grandfather to be a trailblazer. After all, I thought, he was just a Chinese waiter. Now I appreciate how much of a trailblazer he really was,” Chin says of his grandfather, Chin Doo Teung, who was 20 when he emigrated from China in the early 20th
century.
MCCA.COM Teung arrived in Seattle on the steam-
ship Ixion, despite the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that prohibited immigration from China until 1943, when the law was repealed by the Magnuson Act. Like many immigrants before and after him, he came to America illegally as a “paper son,” fraudulently representing that he was the son of a U.S. citizen. Like many other immigrants who arrived on the West Coast, he traveled east, to New York City, in search of a better life.
EARLY FOUNDATIONS Like his grandfather, Chin’s parents were laborers; his father was a cook and his mother a seamstress in Chinatown garment factories. Neither spoke English. “I did not know any lawyers growing
up. I had no inkling about going into the law,” says Chin, a graduate of Princeton University, who grew up in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen as it was transitioning from an Irish neighborhood to a Hispanic one.
MARCH/APRIL 2012 DIVERSITY & THE BAR®
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