Dominic R. Massaro is one of only a dozen Americans of Italian descent to hold Italy’s highest decoration - - Cav. di Gran Croce della Repubblica Italiana.
Born and raised in The Bronx, he enjoys a career filled with prominent public service as a member of the bar, jurist, author and lecturer. A “highly qualified” nominee to the state judiciary by Governor Cuomo, and reappointed by Governors Pataki and Patterson, since 1987 he has presided as a Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, the oldest court (1651) of continuing jurisdiction in the United States. The jurist holds four earned degrees: a bachelors in economics and a masters in government from New York University, a second masters in criminal justice from Long Island University, and a doctorate in jurisprudence from New York Law School.
For eight years he served first as a New York City and then State Human Rights Commissioner under Governor Rockefeller. President Nixon named him to the Appeals Board of the United States Selective Service System; and, during the Ford Administration, he served as United States Regional Director of the Agency for Voluntary Service, with jurisdiction from New York to the Caribbean over such well-known efforts as the Peace Corps. For nine years thereafter, he was administrative law judge for the City of New York.
President of the Catholic Students Association while an undergraduate at NYU, he later served for 20 years as chairman of the Cardinal’s Committee on the Italian Apostolate of the Archdiocese of New York. He is a 35-year trustee of the archdiocesan Lavelle School for the Blind.
Justice Massaro is a past “Outstanding Young Man of America” chosen in 1964 by the U.S. Jaycees. In 1974, he received the “William Paca Award” from the Federation of Italian American Democratic Organizations of New York State. He was named “Catholic New Yorker” in 1986. In 1994, he was joint recipient of the “Lehman-LaGuardia Award in Civil Rights” by the Order Sons of Italy in America and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. UNICO National gave him its highest award in 1995. OSIA conferred him with its highest “Bene Emeritus” designation, also in 1995. Tiro A Segno named him “Honorary Member” in 1999. The National Council of Columbia Associations in Civil Service presented him its “Role Model” Award in 2003, likewise FIERI in 2005. He is the recipient of the Police Honor Legion of the City of New York, the Congressional Medal of Merit, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, and the Gold Cross of the Organization of Latin
In all, the jurist holds more than nine score awards, honors and citations presented him over the years for professional and civic accomplishments.Justice Massaro has received numerous academic recognitions, including conferral of doctoral degrees, honoris causa, in laws, letters and judicial administration. Published in legal and scholastic journals, in 1988 he was co-author of New York’s Role in the Ratification of the United States Constitution; in 1996 he authored Enforcing Judgments and Collecting Debts in New York: Provisional Remedies. The jurist lectures annually on both sides of the Atlantic. He is trustee of the American University of Rome. The author of some two hundred published legal opinions, on three separate occasions the journals of the American Bar Association credited him with “trends in the law.” His 1991 treatise, Cesare Beccaria, The Father of Criminal Justice: His Impact on Anglo American Jurisprudence earned the Primo Dorso.
The jurist is “president emeritus” of the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations. He has served as chair of the Verrazzano Institute at Mercy College (New York), the Garibaldi Museum (New York) and the Sons of Italy Archives at the University of Minnesota; and as president of the Gramercy Boys Club of New York and The Bronx Chamber of Commerce. From 1987-1991, he served as chair of the Bronx County Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution. From 1991-1993, he served as non-partisan chair of New York’s Legislative Advisory Committee on Urban Public Higher Education. In 1992 he was named “Diplomat” by the Colombian Academy of International Law in Bogotá and in 2000 “Academic” by the Pontifical Tiberian Academy in Rome. He is listed in Who’s Who in American Law and The American Bench.
Justice Massaro has for many years been the leading American articulator for the non-marginalizaton of Italy in any reorganization of the United Nations Security Council. In 1998, he served as the American judiciary’s delegate to the Rome Treaty Conference on the Creation of the International Criminal Court. His chairmanship of the United States Antonio Meucci Memorial Committee witnessed success in 2004 in the acknowledgment by Congress of Meucci’s claim in the invention of the telephone, as did his efforts in 2009 to place an official United States marker in Florence in memory of Filippo Mazzei, “patriot” of American
He is currently working toward similar success with reinstatement of the Advance Placement Italian Language test by the College Board that high school students obtain college credits.
Justice Massaro served as a member of the New York State Education Department’s first Italian American Advisory Council (1973-77). Currently, he serves as National Historian of the National Italian American Foundation, and is a director of the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at New York University; of the Italian Government school for North America, LaScuola d’Italia Guglielmo Marconi, and of the Fiorella H. LaGuardia Foundation, all in New York. As a historian, he is credited with the establishment of both the Sons of Italy Archives (1989) and the NIAF Archives (2004) at the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. A Major in the Judge Advocate General Corps of the Army New York Guard, he is past president of the National Commission for Social Justice and a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow.
In the world of chivalry, his credentials are impressive. Both of Italy’s royal houses, that of Savoy and of Bourbon-Two Sicilies have granted him high decorations. He holds the Grand Cross of the Roman Catholic Church’s Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. Pope John Paul II accorded him the dignity of Pontifical Knight of the Grand Cross of St. Gregory the Great, and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta conferred him with the Grand Cross of its Order of Merit. He is president of the American Society of the Italian Legions of Merit and serves as Principal Representative of the American Judges Association at the United Nations.
New York Supreme Court Justice Dominic R. Massaro has finally recently been conferred Knight of the Grand Cross in the Royal Order of Francis I by H.R.H. Prince Carlo di Borbone, Duke of Castro and Head of the Royal House of Bourbon - Two Sicilies.
The Bourbons ruled in southern Italy until the unification of the Italian peninsula in 1861.
