A long-serving liberal federal circuit judge who recently entered semi-retirement has passed away.

Senior Judge Rosemary Pooler of the New York-based U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals died on Thursday at the age of 85, according to Reuters.

The death was announced by a top court official, who said that Pooler passed during her sleep at home. It is unknown at this time what the cause of death was.

Born and raised New Yorker

According to the Syracuse Post Standard, Senior Judge Rosemary Shankman Pooler was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York but moved to Syracuse in 1965 and has lived there ever since.

In rather quick succession, Pooler earned a bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College in 1959, a master's degree from the University of Connecticut in 1961, and a juris doctorate from the University of Michigan School of Law in 1965. She initially entered private practice in her adopted hometown of Syracuse until 1974, when she was elected to the Syracuse City Common Council, and would go on to serve on a variety of other boards, councils, commissions, and foundations.

She was preceded in death in 2017 by her husband, Bill Pooler, to whom she was married for 58 years and will be buried by his side. She is survived by her current partner, Jerry Blackman, as well as her two adult children, Michael and Penelope, and two grandchildren, Broden and Asher.

Pooler's judicial career

In 1991, Pooler became a trailblazer by becoming the first woman ever elected to serve on the Fifth Judicial District of the New York Supreme Court, but she wouldn't stay there for long, as then-President Bill Clinton nominated her in 1994 to become the first woman to serve on the bench of the federal U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.

Just a few years later, Pooler was elevated once again as Clinton nominated her in 1998 to be on the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, where she has served ever since and has been honored with numerous awards and special recognition.

Reuters noted that it was just last year that Pooler entered semi-retirement with the acceptance of senior status after President Joe Biden nominated and saw confirmed Judge Alison Nathan as her replacement, though she has remained actively involved in some of the cases considered by the circuit.

Remembered as a friend and trailblazer for women

Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, clerk of the Second Circuit, told Syracuse.com of Senior Judge Pooler, "She is an extraordinary woman and a great jurist. We will miss her dearly."

The outlet noted that prior to her judicial career, Pooler launched numerous campaigns for various elected offices at the local, state, and federal levels -- she twice ran for Congress in 1986 and 1988 -- but was largely unsuccessful in those efforts save for her elections to the Syracuse council in the '70s and the New York Supreme Court in the '90s.

Pooler was quite fondly remembered by former Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, who recalled initially meeting the judge as a young child and then again as a young lawyer in a U.S. district courtroom, where Miner looked up to Pooler during a time when women were still fairly rare in the legal profession as the "physical representation that you could excel and be welcomed and that there was room for you. Often time you’d walk in courtrooms and you’d be the only woman there.”

The two women bonded and eventually became close friends, so much so that at Miner's request, Pooler conducted the swearing-in ceremonies when Miner was first elected to the city council and then was later elected as mayor.

"She was such a great model for anybody in Syracuse. You could go around the country and say, ‘Rosemary Pooler is my neighbor’ and people who were in the legal world would say what a tremendous mind she had and what a credit to judges she was," Miner said. "She had a storied career, but she was also such a warm and caring and unique person. The kind of person who could walk into a room and just light it up with her wit and her smile and laugh and her ability to talk about the human condition."