New York Chief Judge Judith Kaye has dispensed sound advice to colleagues: In an e-mail Thursday, she asked them not to stop hearing cases involving state lawmakers' firms as a way to protest the Legislature's failure to increase their salaries.

The Legislature is wrong not to have raised state judges' salaries for a decade. But Judge Kaye is correct in advising judges that "using recusal as a strategy rather than as a matter of individual conscience" would be wrong as well.

Ms. Kaye, who has served 15 years as the state's top judge, and served well, will retire at the end of this year.

Speaking during a Law Day ceremony Friday in Albany, she expressed her feelings about having to sue the Legislature over judicial salaries. "It's just one of the additional reasons I'm so heartbroken we have to come to this juncture," she said. "It was totally avoidable and unnecessary and remains so. It should be worked out."

"It's just a very sad thing when you have to sue partners in government," Judge Kaye said. As for recusal, she said it "is and always has been a very individual matter — meaning that when a judge feels he or she cannot be unbiased, that there is some feeling for one party or another, then the judge steps off the case."

But refusing to hear cases involving certain members of the Legislature should not be a retaliatory "strategy," as Judge Kaye points out. There are indications that some judges are considering such a course. The public expects better.