ALBANY - New York Chief Judge Judith Kaye took a run around the reservoir in Manhattan's Central Park on a recent Saturday and went to her granddaughter's track meet. They were the few breaks on a typical working weekend for one of New York's most powerful, yet little known, figures.

Forced from the job because of age limits on Dec. 31, the 70-year-old Kaye is the longest serving chief judge in state history after almost 16 years. Several top New York judges seek to replace her.

A special commission is now winnowing that group to a short list of seven, from which Gov. David Paterson must choose his nominee. Despite seven-day workweeks that often begin at 5 a.m. and end at 9 p.m., Kaye calls it “a great privilege” and “the role of a lifetime.”

As well as chief executive of New York's Unified Court System, which handles 4 million cases a year at 363 courthouses with a $2 billion budget, the chief judge also presides at the seven-member Court of Appeals. New York's top court handles criminal and civil appeals from lower courts, resolving constitutional questions and establishing case law.

“I've always thought the New York Court of Appeals was one of the most important, if not the most important, state court in the land,” said Brooklyn Law School Professor William Hellerstein. Like only two others, in California and New Jersey, he said the court has a national reputation for landmark rulings, such as protecting defendants' right to counsel beyond where the U.S. Supreme Court had gone.

Hellerstein, a legal aid lawyer who has argued cases before the Court of Appeals and made the short list for a seat four times, said he always got a fair hearing there. He believes Kaye will be a very hard act to follow, leaving “an incomparable legacy” in administration and reform of the court system.

Names were due Sept. 8 to the state Commission on Judicial Nomination. From those, the 12-member panel will submit a list of seven candidates deemed qualified to the Democratic governor Dec. 1.

Associate Judges Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, 66, and Eugene F. Pigott Jr., 62, both confirmed to the New York Law Journal they are being considered. So have some lower court judges: Justice Jonathan Lippman, presiding justice of the Appellate Division, First Department; Appellate Division Justice Steven W. Fisher, of the Second Department; and state Supreme Court Justice Fern A. Fisher, the administrative judge of the New York City Civil Court.

Calls by the Associated Press to Court of Appeals Judge Theodore T. Jones Jr., 64, regarded as another leading candidate, were not returned.

The chief judge's dual role pays only $4,800 more than the $151,200 earned annually by the Court of Appeals associate judges. State judges have not had a pay raise in a decade, which prompted Kaye to sue the Legislature earlier this year.

Several attorneys said Kaye, a commercial litigator first named to the Court of Appeals by then-Gov. Mario Cuomo in 1983, will leave a legacy comparable to its most famous chief judge, Benjamin Cardozo. He wrote landmark decisions on fiduciary duty, torts, contracts, product liability and other matters and joined the U.S. Supreme Court in 1932.

While all nodded to Kaye's skill in writing clear, well researched decisions, they said her biggest mark was through tireless administration of the courts.

“She's got enormous energy and great capacity. She recognized the problems and she was fearless in addressing them,” said retired Judge Richard Simons. He served for several months as chief judge after Sol Wachtler resigned in 1992, arrested for stalking a woman with whom Wachtler had an affair.

For Kaye, neither the court nor the law were in her early plans. The Barnard graduate began as a newspaper reporter in the late 1950s. The mother of three and grandmother of seven, now widowed, she went to New York University Law School in order to be taken seriously and move from the society page to the hard news pages, she said.

On a recent autumn weekend, Kaye's main task was reading revisions for the code of professional responsibility for New York lawyers. She also read books on the 1969 Woodstock festival and Belva Lockwood, the first woman lawyer admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, and material about jury reform, all to prepare for upcoming public appearances.

That week, she'd been revising her three draft decisions on cases and reviewing those of the other six Court of Appeals judges from their September session. She also was in frequent contact with Chief Administrative Judge Ann Pfau in managing the sprawling New York court system.

“It's a full, seven-day-a-week job when you put those together,” Kaye said.

Her day usually begins early on an elliptical cross-trainer at the Reebok Sports Club in Manhattan. Two weeks a month, the Court of Appeals hears cases in Albany. Judges randomly pick the decisions they will write from index cards. They immediately begin writing, reviewing each other's drafts, and revising, up to a dozen times, and seek to uphold that court's tradition of remaining current, without a backlog.

“You can't revise often enough,” said Kaye, who declined to single out one decision she was most satisfied with, saying it would be like choosing a favorite child. “Once it goes into those green books, that's the law, and it's very difficult to change it. And you want it to be as right as a human being you can make it.”

“It's at least a five-to-nine job,” Kaye said. “But more than that, you have to love it. You just have to love it.”