Mr. Stern completed his temporary assignment to the New Jersey Supreme Court upon reaching mandatory retirement in June 2011. Before that, he was assigned to the Appellate Division of Superior Court, New Jersey’s intermediate appellate court, from September 1985 to September 2010 and served as the Appellate Division’s Presiding Judge for Administration from 2004 until his retirement. During his judicial career, Mr. Stern authored more than 3,600 written decisions and more than 400 published opinions. Leveraging his judicial experience, he now renders opinions for clients on various issues of concern; advises on such matters as the advisability of taking appeals from trial court and state administrative agency decisions; reviews briefs and papers filed in state and federal courts; and conducts moot courts for attorneys before they argue matters in court. He also conducts mediations and arbitrations and serves as a special hearing officer in attorney discipline cases. He is on the roster of arbitrators for the American Arbitration Association. Mr. Stern presently serves as a member of the New Jersey Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct, which reviews disciplinary complaints against judges, and the Civil Practice Committee, which recommends changes to the rules of civil and appellate practice and procedure governing the courts of the state of New Jersey. He also serves on the Editorial Board of the New Jersey Law Journal and is a frequent lecturer for New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education.
On the national stage, Mr. Stern remains a member of the Council of Chief Judges of State Courts of Appeal, of which he was a member of the Executive Committee before his Judicial retirement; an active elected member of the American Law Institute; a member of the American Bar Association; and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
At Columbia Law School, Mr. Stern had served as a student assistant in the drafting of the first edition of the Clark, Murphy and Lusky casebook, Gratuitous Transfers, which was published by West Publishing Company in 1967. He then practiced law in Newark, concentrating in trusts and estates and taxation, following his appellate clerkship. After serving in private practice, which included defense work in federal and state criminal prosecutions, Mr. Stern became First Assistant Prosecutor and Acting Prosecutor of Hudson County, New Jersey, after which he became Director of Criminal Practice in the Administrative Office of the Courts. There he was in charge of designing a case tracking/case monitoring system to assure the timely movement and disposition of criminal cases and reviewing the Rules of Court governing criminal, juvenile, and municipal court practice. He served as the chair of the Supreme Court’s Special Task Force assigned to review the juvenile court system, including public access to the juvenile matters.
In 1977, Mr. Stern moved to the Attorney General’s office, where he served twice between 1977 and 1980, and became Deputy Attorney General in charge of Appellate Litigation in the Division of Criminal Justice, working on matters in the state and federal appellate courts. He was also designated by the Attorney General to serve as liaison to the judiciary in drafting and proposing legislation and amendments to court rules necessary to implement the constitutional amendment of 1978 and other law enforcement initiatives. Mr. Stern was one of two Deputy Attorneys General assigned to review and propose the 1979 amendments to the Code of Criminal Justice enacted in September 1978, and to implement an educational program after its enactment. He was in charge of developing judicial education and drafting the necessary amendments to the Rules of Court for consideration by the Supreme Court’s Criminal Practice Committee and the Supreme Court.
In early 1980, Mr. Stern returned to the judiciary to develop a criminal speedy trial initiative, to help design the 1980 judicial conference devoted to that initiative, and to work with the Speedy Trial Coordinating Committee chaired by Chief Justice Robert Wilentz. Mr. Stern was designated as Assistant Director of the Administrative Office of the Courts for Legal Services, overseeing the staff work of all Supreme Court committees and reviewing their reports and recommendations. He reviewed and wrote official commentaries for court rule amendments and amendments to the rules of evidence, and he prepared forms and manuals for judges. Mr. Stern also served on the Committee on Opinions, which approved opinions for publication. He was designated by the Supreme Court to represent the Court in a lawsuit, In Re Sackman, 90 N.J. 521 (1981), which dealt with the requirement of New Jersey attorneys to have offices in New Jersey.
Mr. Stern was appointed to the bench in late 1981 and sworn in as a Superior Court Judge on December 18, 1981. He remained in the Administrative Office of the Courts until April 1982, when he commenced judicial service and was assigned to sit in Hudson County. He moved to Essex County in September 1982 and tried matters there until the fall of 1985. He was designated as one of the two judges assigned to try the first capital cases after the death penalty was reinstated that year.
In September 1985, Mr. Stern was assigned by Chief Justice Wilentz to the Appellate Division of Superior Court and was designated its Presiding Judge for Administration by Chief Justice Poritz in 2004. He served in that capacity until reaching his mandatory retirement age of 70 in June 2011. He also temporarily served on the New Jersey Supreme Court from September 2010 until his retirement in June 2011.
As a judge, Mr. Stern wrote more than 450 published opinions, including 42 concurring opinions and ten dissents. He also served from 1986 to 2011 as Chair of the Supreme Court’s Criminal Practice Committee, which made recommendations concerning the rules governing practice in, and administration of, the criminal courts. In addition, he served on the Supreme Court’s Evidence Committee, as judicial representative on the Commission on Professionalism in the Law, and as the Chief Justice’s designee on the Sentencing Commission. During this time he also wrote many articles, gave various lectures, and was active on the Council of Chief Judges of State Courts of Appeal, for which he served on its Executive Committee and as Chair of the Administration of Justice Committee.
Since joining Gibbons, Mr. Stern attended the Center for Dispute Resolution’s Course on Mediation in Washington, D.C. and was added to the roster of attorneys doing court assigned mediations in New Jersey. He served as a member of the New Jersey Supreme Court Civil Practice Committee, which reviews and makes recommendations for changes to the rules governing civil and appellate practice, and a member of the Supreme Court Special Committee, which reviews the Rules of Professional Responsibility. He is presently a member of the Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct, which reviews and makes recommendations with regard to complaints filed against judges, and the Chief Justice’s designee on the Criminal Sentencing and Disposition Commission. He is also on the ALI Regional Advisory Group for Region 3, which covers the Third Circuit. Mr. Stern serves as a special ethics master, hearing disciplinary complaints filed against attorneys, and continues to lecture for the Institute of Continuing Legal Education, state bar associations, and various law schools, including Rutgers and Seton Hall Law Schools, on issues concerning criminal and appellate practice and the rules and cases governing attorney ethics.
Columbia Law School|Rutgers University
J.D.|B.A.
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Law clerk to the Honorable Edward Gaulkin, New Jersey Appellate Division
State of New Jersey|United States District Court for the District of New Jersey|United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit|Supreme Court of the United States
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Listed in Best Lawyers®, Commercial Litigation
Recipient, Essex County Bar Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, 2018
Selected to the Morris/Essex Health & Life magazine’s “Essex County Top Lawyers” list, Appellate Law, 2018; Arbitration and Mediation, 2019
Recipient, New Jersey State Bar Foundation’s Medal of Honor Award, 2015
Recipient, the Honorable Lawrence A. Whipple Memorial Award from the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey, May 2014
Fellow, American Bar Foundation, 2013
New Jersey State Bar Association, Arthur T. Vanderbilt Award for Judicial Administration, 2011
New Jersey Sentencing and Criminal Disposition Commission
Designee of New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner
American Arbitration Association
Roster of Neutrals
American Bar Foundation
Fellow
New Jersey Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct
New Jersey Law Journal
Editorial Board
Council of Chief Judges of State Courts of Appeals
Co-Host of Annual Conference, 2015
New Jersey State Bar Association
New Jersey Judicial College
Faculty, 1974-2011