Episode 102: Anita Earls
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina
00:46:44
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Show Notes
Joining your host MC Sungaila on today’s episode is Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, Anita Earls. She shares her journey to the bench and important lessons she gained along the way, including insights into working with a diverse group on the bench and valuable advice for lawyers and law students who aspire to a similar path.
About Anita Earls:
Anita Earls
Anita Sue Earls was born in Seattle, Washington on February 20, 1960, and raised there by her father, Garnett Austin Brooks, and her mother, Hazel Elliott Brooks, both deceased. Her father was a certified urology associate and her mother was a registered nurse. Anita attended public schools and was awarded a National Achievement Scholarship upon graduation from high school.
A mother of two, and now a grandmother, Anita lives in Durham with her husband Charles D. Walton.
Anita received a Lehman Scholarship from Williams College, where, in 1981, she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Economy (with honors) and Philosophy.
Upon graduating, Anita was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to pursue the study of cooperative work organizations and the role of women in Tanzania. Returning to the United States after three years abroad, Anita obtained her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was a Senior Editor on the Yale Law Journal and published a note titled “Petitioning and the Empowerment Theory of Practice”. She was the first Robert Masur Fellow in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Nation Institute in 1987.
From 2009 to 2012, Anita was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Institute, Center for Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences, at Duke University conducting research on census and redistricting issues.
Following law school, in January 1988 Anita joined the firm of Ferguson, Stein, Watt, Wallas, Adkins & Gresham in Charlotte, North Carolina. In private practice, she litigated in state and federal courts, handing family law, criminal defense, personal injury, voting rights, police misconduct, school desegregation, and employment discrimination cases.
Anita was appointed by President Clinton in 1998 to serve as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. From 2000 to 2003, she directed the Voting Rights Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Returning to North Carolina in 2003, she joined Julius Chambers at the UNC Center for Civil Rights as Director of Advocacy.
In 2007 Anita founded the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a non-profit legal advocacy organization and served as its Executive Director for ten years. While there Anita litigated voting rights and other civil rights cases.
Anita has taught at the University of Maryland and the University of North Carolina law schools, and in the African and African-American Studies Department at Duke University. She is admitted to practice in North Carolina, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Transcript
I'm thrilled to have joined as our show guest, Justice from the North Carolina Supreme Court, Anita Earls. Welcome.
Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here.
You've had an interesting career before the bench doing some significant civil rights work in different arenas, both for the Federal Government and in nonprofits. I want to talk about that but I want to go even before that first in terms of how you decided you wanted to be a lawyer or go to law school. What inspired you to do that?
I knew that I wanted to go to law school from a very young age. That was inspired by the experience of growing up in a mixed-race family. My parents met in Missouri in the late 1950s. My father was Black, and my mother was White. At that time, it was illegal for them to be married. I grew up early on with this consciousness of the role of the legal system and the role that attorneys can have in making a difference. I wanted to try to break down some of the barriers that I saw my family facing. They were barriers to educational opportunities and employment opportunities. From a young age, I wanted to become a lawyer.
From a personal impact on your family and what you had seen. Certainly, I've heard that from some of our guests. It was family experiences but also mixed, and there is this idea that the law is a way of problem-solving for others and problem-solving issues that your family encountered but also a good platform for doing that.
It seems like it's a tool. As I thought about what skills I had and what difference I could make, it seemed like one opportunity to make things better for everyone. That was my goal. I grew up in Seattle, Washington. I remember reading William O. Douglas’ biography, Go East, Young Man. He was from Spokane, Washington, and went East beyond the US Supreme Court.
Being from Washington State, that was one of the many things but it was also something that made me think. I promise you. When I grew up in Seattle, it was the Seattle of the TV show, Here Come the Brides, if anyone would remember that one. Pre-Microsoft, pre-Starbucks, and pre-Amazon, it was not the center of so much that it is now. There was also that element that encouraged me to think that I could be a lawyer.
It's interesting that you mentioned Justice Douglas. Judge Margaret McKeown on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote a book about him and his efforts with regard to environmentalism. That is pretty interesting. We talked on the show about her book. She's also from Seattle. There's continuity there. For law school, did you go East?
I did. I went East for college. As a matter of fact, I left Seattle in 1977 and have not lived there since then. I went to Williams College in Western Massachusetts. It was small and in the mountains. I had come from the mountains, so that seemed familiar. I then went to Yale Law School.
How did you get to North Carolina? What was that journey?
In law school, I read the civil rights precedent of the day and the cases that had been decided. Several of them that came was argued by a civil rights attorney named Julius Chambers. One of his law partners came to Yale recruiting. I had the opportunity to work at the private law firm where Julius Chambers had argued cases in school desegregation, employment discrimination, voting rights, and civil rights, you name it. I had never lived in North Carolina before. I didn't have any Carolina ties. Now, it turned out to be the place I've lived longer than anywhere else.
Sometimes, life takes turns you don't see coming. What an amazing experience. How was that working in that firm?
It was incredible to learn from some of the best. It was a small firm. It was an opportunity that is rarer, perhaps these days. There were maybe 12 partners and 2 associates. I was working with all these very experienced trial attorneys. I was learning litigation and learning how to try cases. They very much had the ethic that, first of all, they would serve anyone who came in the door.
If someone came to you with a problem, in their view, it was your job to help them find a solution. It was any kind of issue we would address. Their attitude was to throw you in at the deep end and either sink or swim. I was going to court within a couple of weeks of being sworn in. I learned fast. I was doing misdemeanor criminal cases in district court. They were small but still.
It's so important to get that first training but also you can find out whether you like doing that work. You can think in your head what it's like to do the work but doing it is when you realize, “That's a good fit for me and my natural abilities or it's not a good fit.” You need that experience to know that. That's amazing.
One of the good things about being at a small private firm was the flexibility. While I was in law school and immediately coming out, I thought that Family Law issues were of interest to me as well as civil rights work. I started doing a lot of Family Law cases and pretty quickly figured out that I was not well-suited to that. As much as I had a deep respect for the issues involved, sometimes, pretty significant constitutional issues are involved in Family Law cases, as well as the incredible impact that you can have on your clients’ lives, on their families, and the community.
Some of the domestic violence cases were so important. Multiple factors made it work that I was not good at. I couldn't advise my clients and not get emotionally involved. The firm was generous to allow me to work my way out of that caseload and not do that work anymore. You are right. You might think you're going to enjoy it, and then when you start doing it, there's some aspect about it that you hadn't anticipated.
You might think you’re going to enjoy it, and then you start doing it, and there’s some aspect about it that you hadn’t anticipated.
There's no substitute for doing it. That's good. You could find out what you enjoyed. You did enjoy the civil rights work.
For ten years, at the firm doing every imaginable civil rights case you can think of. I especially enjoyed the voting rights work because I was working with communities. In a voting rights case, my clients might be the local chapter of the NAACP. I was representing a community and working to put in place structures that would give them fair representation. I had more ability to feel like I could make a difference.
There's a community-building aspect to it as well, in tandem with the case that you are working on. That's good that that turned out to be a good fit since that was one of your initial impetus to go to law school. You ended up doing civil rights work in a lot of different contexts after that. I would say, first of all, that the breadth of the subject matter that you were working on in the private firm is a good launching pad for other things that you would want to do. You have a broad base and then also, in retrospect, are good for being on the bench. You have so many different issues and questions that come to you that it's good to be able to be agile between all of those.
There are some career paths that allow you to be more of a generalist. Being in a state appellate court is certainly one where we are handling utility cases, antitrust cases, Family Law cases as well, as Constitutional Law issues, and a lot of criminal work. I did criminal defense in private practice. I tried jury trials in felony criminal cases. Having that opportunity, especially early on in my career, to learn those trial skills in a wide variety of types of cases, it was very hard to merge a criminal practice and a civil practice because their timelines are so different. I was very fortunate to have that general experience.
I expected to stay at the law firm. These days, people have expectations to move around more but when I came out of law school, especially because by that time, I was a mom and wanted some stability for my family, I didn't have an expectation that I would end up doing civil rights work in so many different settings. I was fortunate to have those opportunities.
There are different times of your life with different things going on personally as well because you make different decisions. That's such a well-rounded experience in the one area of the law that a lot of people don't get.
It was unique to be able to then go to the Justice Department and see how civil rights enforcement happens around the country. In a law firm, it was statewide. North Carolina is a big state but still, it is in North Carolina. At the Justice Department, I had responsibility for four different litigating sections. We had cases around the country. We had a different perspective on how the government enforces people's civil rights.
To work at a national nonprofit, The Lawyers’ Committee, most of my cases were in the south but not exclusively. I had a case in Rhode Island, for example. That was a good perspective but I wanted to be closer to clients and communities. That's why I came back to North Carolina. I was only out of the state for five years and then came back to North Carolina. Most of my career has been here.
It’s helpful to have the national perspective because that is part of what you would encounter in North Carolina as well. The Federal Government comes everywhere. To have that perspective of perhaps parallel litigation or how they view this and then how we take that into account in what we are doing in the nonprofit was helpful. It's seeing the whole 360-degree view of what's going on in this area. What caused you to decide to say, “My next way to serve is to be on the bench.”
Initially, I put myself forward for a Federal judgeship in 2008. In North Carolina, the senator at the time, Senator Kay Hagan, had a very open process. She said, “If you are interested in any Federal appointment,” this was for US attorney's offices as well as for judgeships. She appointed a committee of people to whom she had screened applicants. This is the only time, at least that I'm aware of, that a senator has done this in our state. I could submit my resume and my materials.
I did go through her process. She picked three people for vacancies in the Middle District of North Carolina. I was 1 of 3 but the president did not appoint me. That was the first time I thought about being a judge. What motivated me at that point was that it was such an open process. I had the opportunity to put my name forward. I didn't have to wait to be called, and I didn't have to have connections anywhere, necessarily. I can talk about the different processes to get to the bench. It was, in many ways, a political process but the fact that it was open, I was impressed by that. I wanted to take advantage of that.
I was happy with the work I was doing. I was, at that time, an Executive Director of a new organization. I stayed in that role for ten years. In 2018, there was this one seat up for election on our state Supreme Court. At that point, it seemed important to me to focus on state courts and to think about how our state constitutions in most states are a very robust source of law to protect rights.
On the chance to run for office again, I didn't have to wait for someone to ask me. In our state, all our judgeships are elected at every level except the magistrates. Trial judges and all of our appellate judges are elected statewide. All you have to do is build a campaign. I left my job at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice because it was a non-profit, non-partisan organization.
Judgeships are elected. So at every level, except for the magistrates, trial judges and all of our appellate judges are elected statewide. All you have to do is build a campaign.
You do that when you are running for office.
My election was the first one that our state Supreme Court seats were partisan in some time. It has flipped back and forth between being partisan and non-partisan. In 2018, for the first time in a while, the seat was a partisan election. I was a full-time candidate for a year, which was fascinating to do as someone who had been doing voting rights work for, by that point, almost 30 years. The reason I did it was because I wanted to have the opportunity to serve the people of the state in a slightly different role but always with the perspective of wanting to make sure that we guarantee equal justice under the law.
That's an interesting parallel that you bring up between those two methods of coming to the bench. They seem, at first, completely different but your perspective is that if you are interested, it's an open process to at least put your name in the hat. The rest of it is whatever it is. Especially with the appointment process, there is a political aspect to that. At least you can get in the door and be considered. There is no permission for the election either. You put yourself out there and see what the public decides. That's pretty neat. That's an interesting way of looking at both of those. Most people would say they are very different. A year of full-time campaigning, how is that?
Most of my colleagues on our court started out on lower courts but not everyone. There are two of us on our court who did not serve in any kind of judicial capacity at all before being on the Supreme Court. Our chief justice was a US attorney and went straight from being a US attorney to being chief justice. You don't have to come up through the ranks. Personally, when I think about the value of diversity in our court, I think about it in multiple dimensions. Certainly, it is race and gender but I also would include age at prior legal experience. It's good to have people on our court who have been trial court judges but it's also good to have people who have been litigators.
North Carolina is a big state. There are over seven million registered voters. I had a lot of people I needed to reach. I tried to run a grassroots campaign. Roughly 90% of my contributions came from individuals who contributed $100 or less. I felt sometimes like I was a telemarketer. I was selling myself. I did not learn how to do that in law school. In fact, I will say that was one of the surprising things to me. I was so used to telling my clients stories. When you are a candidate, you have to tell your own story. It took me a couple of months to get comfortable with telling my story.
I have that problem, too. I'm perfectly happy being an advocate for someone and telling their story in a brief or in some other way. I’m like, “Do you want me to do that for myself? It's hard.” How did you adjust?
There were some good folks who did the training. I did two different candidate trainings. One of them was conducted by these two women who are professional actors. It was fascinating. It probably would've helped me do jury arguments.
I was going to say, “I could have used this previously.”
They teach you so much about public speaking and how to frame what you are trying to communicate. After a while, I went to many political events where I had to have my 1-minute speech or my 5-minute speech. Maybe I would get ten minutes. I learned how to adjust how I could introduce myself to voters. I found that it was rewarding to be able to talk to people about why the law matters, why courts matter, and why their vote makes a difference. I did not enjoy the fundraising if. I'm going, to be honest. I did not like asking for money but going out, meeting voters, talking at public events, and talking about our court system, that part I loved.
That's neat. It's good when you can find something you enjoy in that even if there are parts of the process that you are like, “That's not my thing.” You found something in it that you are like, “This part, I like. I will focus on that instead of the things I don't like about this.” Even when I was running for our local bar for the board of directors, I tried to find that too 1-minute or 3-minute when you are going to the different bar events. I enjoyed getting out and meeting people. From that perspective, seeing how there were different sections in the bar and what the bar was. It was very different depending on what kind of practice they had.
Their perception of the whole bar was their particular section of substantive law practitioners or other things. It gave me much more perspective on, “This is the prism of what the bar is to so many different people.” When you are on the board, you are responsible for all of those as opposed to the part that you know. I thought, “That is cool.” You get to see it as educational. You get to see other practices that you wouldn't see, how those sections are very important to those people, and how you can help them in their meetings. Those are small potatoes compared to yours but similar.
You make an important point, which is that campaigning is a two-way street. I’m wanting to get my message out about what I stand for and why I want to be on the court. I also get to hear from voters about what they care about, what matters to them, and how they think the justice system is either working for them or failing them. That's an important point.
You take that with you. That's the unexpected part. You take all of that in, and it affects you in terms of how you think of your job. You are always thinking, “Maybe I didn't know that perspective before but I'm going to think about it before I do something.” It is a little back and forth. It's interesting. You then got elected.
We have eight-year terms. I'm halfway through. I have been on the bench for almost four years.
Do you have retention elections after that or not?
No. The seat will be up, and anyone can file the run. In this state, in the past, many years ago, there had been something of a custom of not challenging incumbent judges. It was probably for a variety of reasons but that has changed. All the seats are always contested.
How has it been? You are part-way through your term. Was it what you expected?
I enjoy it. I especially like the opportunity to be a generalist and be engaged in a wide variety of areas of the law. I didn't anticipate how isolating it was. I had underestimated the extent to which, as a practicing attorney, when I had an issue, I couldn't figure out or I wanted to bounce around how the facts apply in a particular situation, what legal arguments I should make, and how I should frame it. There was always somebody I could call. I had some group of folks I was partnering with or co-counseling with. There was always a group and lots of different points of view.
You have your consensus-building and your collegial decision-making.
There are seven of us. You need four votes for any position. Even though we are in that consensus mode, I find it challenging that I can't reach out to attorneys and say, “Tell me about this. How are this impacting things?” You are not going to find anyone who has practiced in every area of law that comes before our appellate courts.
With a thing like termination of parental rights, I had never handled termination of parental rights cases, even though I had done some Family Law. There are also involuntary commitment cases. We have a case pending involving those issues. I never handled an involuntary commitment hearing. I can't call anybody up and ask them what they think. We have clerks. I did not do a clerkship but I can't even begin to emphasize enough how much I rely on my clerks to bounce ideas off of.
Maybe people don't realize that I have 30 years of experience in the law but they are the ones who have most recently been in law school. I rely on their legal research skills. I rely on them to help me think through the issues and what the right answers are. They have an enormous contribution. I'm grateful that I have been so fortunate to have fantastic young lawyers working with me.
That's something that has come up before in other episodes of the show, which is judicial clerkships. We are encouraging people to consider those because it's such a unique opportunity. You never get to be on the other side again. If you are a litigator, you get insight into what the considerations are that judges are thinking about in making decisions so you can better present your case when you are on the other side advocating. It's priceless.
Also, to consider state courts. Everybody goes directly to the federal courts and wants to apply to all of those. As you noted, the state Supreme Courts have their own unique constitutions that they are interpreting, which may be more protective than the Federal Constitution in certain cases. It's the highest court of the state. They are deciding important statewide issues. Where that's possible out of law school? Some courts have career research attorneys who have been there for many years but others have more of the term clerks like the federal courts have.
It can be a little harder because the process is not as systematic. With a little bit of initiative and ingenuity, you can find state court judges that have issued a ruling that you thought was consequential or that you like the reasoning. That's what I would advise someone in law school. If you have the luxury of being geographically broad, look at some areas of law that you are interested in. Look at who's authored some opinions that you think are good. Reach out to their chambers. You have to do it early on. I have already hired my clerks, who will start in 2024. You have to start early. The opportunities are tremendous.
We talked about clerkships before but not in this way about considering the state Supreme Courts and other courts in the state if they are open to non-career attorneys in that way. Since you have been on the bench for four years, do you have any advice for lawyers or advocates in terms of what's effective in terms of brief writing, argument or anything like that?
The most important thing was the brief. What I found out was that oral argument does win or lose cases. Thinking about how to frame the issues and how to engage in a dialogue with the court is important.
An oral argument does win or lose cases. To think about how to frame the issues and how to engage in a dialogue with the court is really important.
I had a question for you. In terms of your court, do you conference prior to the argument or only after the argument?
State courts do it differently. We conference right after the argument. We do not discuss the cases with each other prior to the argument. Unlike some courts where cases get assigned, we discuss the case, do an initial vote, and then pick which opinions we want to write. You are talking to all seven of us.
In that circumstance, there's much more opportunity for an argument to make a difference. Still, I've seen it as an advocate. Sometimes, explaining something a little bit differently, highlighting different things in the record or even when you are preparing for an argument, you see things a little bit differently. You are like, “This is how I see it. This makes a difference in how I view the legal results of the case. Maybe that will make a difference to the court.” I've seen that happen as well, where you can see the members of the court looking at it differently when you explain it a little bit differently.
For brief writing, my tip is to research. I get frustrated when the brief is mostly making arguments and not backing them up with cases. I enjoy legal research. That's part of my job but it is helpful if the person writing the brief has thought about this from that point of view. I almost would say to start with the opinion that you want us to write and then give us all the cases that we would need to get to that opinion.
Start with the opinion that you want us to write and then give us all the cases that we would need to get to that opinion.
That means sometimes that you have to think about, “What's the court's jurisdiction? What is the standard of review? Where are the facts in the record that matter? What are the cases the court wants to rely on?” Sometimes, that also means taking head-on the difficult issues in your case. If I'm going to be writing an opinion, I'm going to want to be addressing the difficult issues.
Sometimes, advocates want to focus on their strongest points. This is a weak point over here, too, that we need to deal with. My advice for oral argument is to practice. Even the most experienced advocates will do a better job on their feet in front of us if they have practiced talking about the case. You can get all these ideas in your head and have written your brief but talking about it out loud and getting feedback on whether or not it was persuasive that's how you do well in oral argument.
I always wish that all of that painful part beforehand didn't happen, and then you could do the argument but it's essential to the argument. If it is something you at least enjoy in retrospect or think is helpful, you must put in all that work prior. That's the only way. It is like any performer in a theater. You have to do all the practice or else the performance isn't going to be good. It's the same thing but from a substantive standpoint.
With the brief writing, you want to be the first one out there saying something that isn't as good for your position, then have the other side come in and torpedo you with, “Here's this bad thing.” If there's some way to frame it and say, “That's not good but it doesn't impact the results in this case for the following reasons,” I would rather be saying that first defensively in a prior brief after someone has pointed that out. That's a good point.
Thinking about the opinion is what you first said, which is how to write it both reasoning-wise. I would also think, “What do you want me to do? What is the disposition?” Many people don't get to that point. They will say, “Here's that. Here's this.” You are like, “What does that mean? What do you want in this case?” That's helpful, too.
That is also a good way to close your oral argument, whether you are the appellant or the appellee, tell us what you want us to do, even if all you want us to do is to affirm the lower court. Maybe you want us to remand with instructions. There are a lot of frequently multiple possible dispositions, including what issues we need to reach. It's very helpful to have the roadmap of, “If you find our favor on issue number one, you don't need to reach issue number two.” Those clarifications help as we then go back and conference the case. In our court, at least, we are going to go back and discuss it for a few minutes to sometimes hours, depending on when in the day your argument is. On that day, we are going to go back and discuss it. This is your chance to shape our discussion.
You are right. There are some cases where there are multiple potential dispositions. You can have a preference or you can say, “Stop at this issue. Give us this relief, and we are good. You don't need to reach the rest of it.” Sometimes, I will do that in headings. In the first one, it is like, “This is reversal under judgment.” In the footnote on this second heading, saying, “You don't need to reach this or anything else if you agree with us on the first one but here we go.” You don't want to have to make extra work for the judges if they don't have to.
In a typical session, we will hear thirteen cases. Some of them are criminal cases where they may be only appealing on one issue. Others may be complex business cases where there are 6, 7 or 8 issues. Even though you might think, “That's obvious,” what you described, laying it out clearly does help us.
It is in your recorded discretionary review. You get to decide which cases you want to hear to begin with.
Only about half of our cases are discretionary. Unlike many states, in our state, you have an automatic right to appeal to our court if there is a dissent in the Court of Appeals. It's interesting because in the cases that we accept for discretionary review, by the time we get to oral argument, we've already thought about it quite a bit. We thought about whether or not we needed to hear it, and then we heard it. Whereas the ones that come as a direct appeal from dissent, the first we get to see it is when it gets put on our calendar for argument. The Court of Appeals helps determine our docket by what they dissent in.
That's so interesting. Is there a new briefing in the court or does it just come up?
Yeah. There are new briefs. Frequently, they might have had six issues in the Court of Appeals, and the dissent only dissented on two. Unless they petition us to hear the other 4, we only hear the 2 that were the basis of the dissent.
That's very cool. That is unique. That's not something that I've heard about either. That’s interesting. What advice would you give to someone who might be considering sometime in the future that they might like to be a judge?
I would encourage them to try to litigate. Whether you want to be a trial court judge or appellate judge, experience in the courtroom is going to serve you well. It doesn't matter what substantive area of the law. That's, in part, why we see so many people make a move from being a district attorney to being a judge. There are many other ways to litigate. There is civil litigation and criminal defense work. All of those get you in the courtroom.
We have had members of our court who never litigated. They have not expressed this but I have a sense that it's challenging. As a trial judge, especially if you are doing a lot of criminal cases, which you will be, whether they are trials or taking pleas, there's so much that you learn by having been in the process that will help you on the bench.
There's such a huge learning curve being in that new position. It's nice to have something under your belt. You can't have everything. I know that sometimes that happens when people are applying for the upper election. Everyone is like, “How come you haven't had this experience in this kind of law?” No one can have that full breadth. It is not going to happen. There's going to be some substantive area you haven’t dealt with. At least, having been involved in the process in some way, whether it's as an advocate or as a trial judge, helps mimic all of the quick studying that you have to do when you first get on the court.
I also think that it gives you valuable insight into what's going on in the litigation and how it's going to affect the parties, especially in criminal cases. We are often deciding what the rules should be and how state statutes should be interpreted. It is everything from, “Was there ineffective assistance of counsel? Did the defendant waive their right to counsel?” In all of those types of questions, you are going to understand and have more insight into them if you have been in the courtroom.
What surprised you most about being on the Supreme Court? Was there something about the type of work that you were doing or the process of decision-making? Was there something that stood out to you that you went, “I hadn't considered this?” You mentioned the monastic part that you weren't able to go out and talk to people, which is, “I would like to speak to the person most knowledgeable about this area of the law and bounce it off with them,” which is not possible.
The other thing I would say I was surprised about or didn't expect is the extent to which, at least in our court, it's an institution with a whole lot of historical practices and customs. There's a hierarchy that I didn't anticipate. I thought, “We are all elected.” When I was first elected, I naively came onto the court thinking because we have eight-year terms, that I had more years than anybody else. That's a cultural matter that varies from court to court. I hadn't anticipated that but I found my way around.
The court itself is an institution that has its own customs or what have you, that exist independently in the individuals who are there. That's how it's brought. You don't think of it that way necessarily as being, “It is its own culture.”
There are some things I love about our court. The fact that we pick our own cases to write has a huge impact. It impacts what you get to focus on. It impacts your contribution to jurisprudence. You can only pick a case to write for the court if you are in the majority. We go in order of seniority, and then we rotate. I started as seventh but then, you move up to one, and then you are 2nd and then 3rd in the order. When you are picking last, you are going to get stuck with something that probably isn't your choice.
That's a wonderful feature of our court that I know. Other state courts follow the US Supreme Court practice of the chief assigning opinions. A good chief will care about what their justices are interested in and want to do. I like that about our court that we have some measure of autonomy and can pick what we want to write.
If there's a particular area you are interested in or would like to have some continued impact on jurisprudence for the state, you might have that opportunity.
We also have something of a custom of deferring to each other's areas of expertise. We have a member of the court who, before coming to the court, worked on workers' compensation cases. If we have a worker's comp case, we defer to her to write that. We have another member of the court who was on our utility commission. When we have a utility case, you will see his name on it. That's another custom that is useful.
That's good. You might as well maximize all of the experience and skills that everybody comes to the bench with. That's helpful. All of what you've described is one that's a collegial court that's trying to engage across all of the members. That's good that that's some of the customs there. That's one of the things about being on a multi-person bench. You don't have any say in who your colleagues are. That’s interesting.
Judge Millett on the DC Circuit had mentioned something. She was a Supreme Court advocate. She said she hadn't considered how much all the relationships between the judges on the court mattered and also how much it does matter in terms of deciding the case on this set of facts with this party. At an appellate court or Supreme Court level, you are thinking, “Am I making a rule that is going to be fair, effective, and is the right rule for others who aren't in front of me?” She knew that was important as an advocate but saw it from a different perspective when she was on the bench.
A good advocate will address this in an honest and straightforward way. Every case does because it sets a precedent but if it's a case of first impression that will have a huge impact on the legal system or whatever aspect is involved, a good advocate will address that and will say why the rule that they are asking you to adopt will have good consequences.
These facts aren’t a complete answer in an appellate or a Supreme Court setting. That's right. We are worried about other cases quite appropriately, given the precedent of our decisions. Thank you so much for joining me in the show and discussing all of this. It was interesting. I appreciated that. I learned so much about your court and how it is different from many other states Supreme Courts. It's neat. It is a civics lesson learning about how each of the states operates with their Supreme Courts also. Before we close, I wanted to do a few lightning-round and a few questions to close out. One of them is what talent do you wish you had but don't?
I wish that I could speak multiple foreign languages. It gets you in a mindset of another culture. Being able to think in the way that other people do is helpful in the law as well. I've learned, at various times, some French, Spanish, and Swahili. I am sorry that I'm not fluent in more than one language.
Tell me about this Swahili. How did you come to study that? Were you traveling, and you wanted to make sure you learned it?
I had a fellowship after college. I had three years between college and law school. I had a fellowship to study abroad and spent 6 months in Tanzania, including 3 months living in a rural village.
What an amazing opportunity and experience. I was like, “That's an unusual one.” I had to ask about that. The one thing I found from knowing a little bit about different languages is that when you are learning a new one, at least I tend to fill in a missing word that I don't have the vocabulary for with some other foreign language I know. It comes out as jumbled. People are looking at you like, “What are you speaking?” I’m like, “It is a little bit of Spanish and French.”
I've done that, too.
It is like your brain goes, “I'm in my non-native speaking.” It jumbles it all together. It is trying to help you but it's not. Who are your favorite writers?
There are so many different kinds of writing that I find it hard to pick one person. Someone who writes a novel is different from someone who writes a good non-fiction book, memoirs, and poetry like the whole waterfront is different. If you forced me to pick one, I would start with Zora Neale Hurston. She is truly a hero of mine. I love her writing.
The point you made is, first, good writing across all those genres is still good writing. It can inform legal writing, too. You are right that each of those is unique. I have friends who are poets who say, “We are good at capturing moments. That's what we do. We have very discreet moments in poetry but writing a novel is a different proposition. We have to reconfigure how we write to do that.”
Some of them are like, “We are not sure we have that in us in the same way that we have poetry.” Each of the genres calls for different things and different strengths. It is designed to capture different things. I like short stories. They are great because they have to be tight. There are some that test your mental when you are writing or reading those.
I find that they stay with you. You remember them.
There's some kind of challenge, movement or something in them that’s distinct. It is a very distinct thing, which makes the short story what it is. For what in life do you feel most grateful?
My family, without a doubt. That's the number one best thing ever.
Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite to a dinner party?
That's also a hard one. I'm going to go with Nelson Mandela if I can bring him back. When I was very young, learning about apartheid and what it meant in that country and learning about colored people in South Africa, I initially thought that must be what I am. From learning about his life and the incredible integrity of someone who would spend those many years in prison and then come and lead his country, I would like to talk to him.
That's an amazing story. You think about someone like that to be around and learn by soaking that up, too. There are some things that people don't talk about but you can sense them. That would be one. The last question is, what is your motto if you have one?
I do have one. My motto is that I fight for justice with a strong heart.
That's awesome. I like that. It is the strong heart of being empathetic and compassionate but there's also being strong in that internally and then giving that out to the world. That's a great image.
Thank you. Also, to me, a strong heart means I don't give up.
You have persistence and care forward despite obstacles. I got that from that too but that's great. There's a lot in that phrasing. Thank you so much for sharing everything you have, joining the show, and having this discussion. I enjoyed it. I've learned a lot about the North Carolina Supreme Court and how you operate. I also enjoyed hearing your work before coming to the court, which is so important also. Thank you
Thank you. I am so thrilled that you are doing this show. What a service to the legal community across the country.
Thank you so much once again. I enjoyed it.
Thanks.