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Melody Stewart was elected in November 2018 to a full term as the 161st Justice, and the first African-American woman, to serve on the Ohio Supreme Court. Justice Melody Stewart had a different path which led her to the Supreme Court. She believes that in electing judges, there shouldn't be any political affiliations with it because the more we politicize it, the weaker the judiciary is. Furthermore, Justice Stewart urges young people to explore their paths, get on the bench and get other work experience. Learn the profound reason she implores these young ones to explore by tuning in to this episode now. 

Relevant episode link:

Justice Melody Stewart 

About Melody Stewart:

Melody Stewart was elected in November 2018 to a full term as the 161st Justice to serve on the Supreme Court of Ohio. Prior to joining the Supreme Court, Justice Stewart served on the Eighth District Court of Appeals — elected to an unexpired term in 2006 and twice reelected to full terms. She served as the court’s Administrative Judge in 2013.

Justice Stewart has more than 30 years of combined administrative, legal, and academic experience. She was an administrator for a health care management company, a music teacher, a civil defense litigator, and a law school administrator and professor before being elected to the Court of Appeals. While on the Eighth District Court of Appeals, Justice Stewart was assigned to hear cases in other appellate districts and in the Ohio Supreme Court.

Justice Stewart earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the College Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati; her law degree as a Patricia Roberts Harris Fellow from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University; and her Ph.D. as a Mandel Leadership Fellow at Case Western Reserve University’s Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences. She was also awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Cleveland State University.

After practicing law as an assistant law director for the cities of Cleveland and East Cleveland, Justice Stewart worked as a lecturer, an adjunct instructor, and an assistant dean at Cleveland Marshall before joining the fulltime faculty. Additionally, she taught at the University of Toledo College of Law and at Ursuline College, and was director of student services at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law.

Justice Stewart has served on many boards and committees, including the Ohio Criminal Justice Recodification Committee, the Ohio Supreme Court’s Judicial College board, was chair of the Ohio Capital Case Attorney Fee Council, and served as a commissioner and chair of the Board of Planning and Zoning for the city of Euclid. She has been a member of various professional, educational, civic, and community organizations. Justice Stewart is admitted to practice in the state and federal courts in Ohio, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court.

Justice Stewart is admitted to practice in the state and federal courts in Ohio, the District of Columbia, and the United States Supreme Court.

Of historical note: Justice Stewart is the first African-American woman elected to the Ohio Supreme Court.

I'm very pleased to have on the show a justice on the Ohio Supreme Court Justice Melody Stewart. Welcome.  

Thank you for having me. 

You have a great experience on the bench, both on the Court of Appeals and then on the Supreme Court. Before we talk about that journey and how that happened, I wanted to start first with what drew you to the law, to begin with, and what inspired you to go to law school. 

Mine is not a traditional path. It seems like it should have been in that my older sister is also an attorney or has a Law degree, which professionally she hasn't used in decades but you always have the knowledge that a Law degree gives you. My older sister and I are quite a few years apart in age, eighteen and a half years to be exact. She was in law school when I was in high school. She had gone to college, had a couple of other different careers and decided to go to law school when she was in her early 30s to start.  

I was in high school and she worked and went to law school. I thought she should be bonding with me but all her time was spent studying and working. Law school was in the back of my mind, not a good place because it deprived me of time with my older sister. I never thought about it in all honesty until I did. I didn't naturally think, “My sister pursued that avenue. Maybe I should think about it.” It never crossed my mind. As you may or may not know, I was a Music major as an undergraduate. I got a background in music. As I often tell people, “With a name like Melody, what else would I study in college?” 

I was interested in that because I'm like, “That's the usual Political Science, English degree or something like that,” then law school but you have a different path.  

In one of my prior careers to being on the bench, I was an administrator or an assistant dean for missions out of law school. Oftentimes, I would talk to prospective law students who were saying, “Should I major in Political Science? My current major is History. Is that okay for law school?” I tell them what my undergraduate degree was. I wasn't thinking about law school. As a matter of fact, the only thing I wanted to study in undergraduate school was Music. I didn't equate a career, making a living to what I was studying. Music was the only path for me. I'm not a Performance major. I was a Music Theory major and minor in Composition, learning the technical aspects of music.  

I'm glad you mentioned that because I was curious about that. The obvious thing would be to think you were a Performance major in Music but there are many other things. That's interesting. I was curious about what your focus was in your Music major. 

I wanted to know how music worked and find out everything I could about it. That was Music Theory. In those 4 years, I studied 16th and 18th-century counterpoint analysis of sound and music. You take orchestration and score reading. I studied three different foreign languages, Italian, French and German because those are the romantic languages and physics of sound and music and how it works. That was my only interest. I finished undergrad and promptly took that Law degree and got a job in the healthcare industry. I wasn't thinking about, “Will my Bachelor of Music degree support me? It's what I wanted to study.” 

At that healthcare management company, where I worked after undergraduate school and during college part-time, the vice president of the company was in law school part-time. He would come in and sit his books down. I would occasionally peruse through them in corporations and property. It all seemed interesting to me. By that time, I was coming up on a year out of undergraduate school and getting a little intellectually bored. I called my sister and said, “I'm thinking of applying to law school. What do you think?” 

She's very quiet and said, “I don't think I'd do it if I were you,” which I found interesting. I applied the next day and the rest is history. I spent three years in law school, quite frankly, saying, “Do I want to go to law school? Do I want to be a lawyer?” In retrospect, I'm glad I did. I do enjoy being a lawyer. I did practice for a while and spent quite a bit of time in law academia before going to the bench. I said, “I have no regrets. If I went back to practicing law tomorrow, that would be fine. If I never practiced law a day in my life, that would be fine.” The knowledge you have and the way you think as a lawyer has been invaluable. I'm grateful that I did finish those three years. 

Either you're very independently minded within the family or there was a contrary element to it when your sister said, “I wouldn't do it.” 

Maybe a combination. 

I was interested in your description of what you were interested in when you were talking about your Music focus in undergrad. I'm very interested in music also but opera symphony. I've been involved in working around them. I’m certainly not performing either but interested in that world. When you were describing what you were curious about, I thought of two things, which was intellectual curiosity. You were curious about how it all fits together. I thought, “That's a good fit for law because we get to do that and explore questions like that.” 

The second thing was fitting it all together, looking at the big picture of things and thinking, “That's interesting too. That's what we get to study different areas of the law and you get to look at the big picture of how the law is fitting together even more when you're on the bench.” There are some corollaries to what you liked about studying music and the law. 

People should study what they like because you'll be good at it when you like it. There are so many corollaries between different things. In the practice of law or even serving on the bench, there are many different kinds of courts to serve on. There are many different ways to practice law and areas in which you can do it or even not practice law but use your legal thinking and training in business. 

When I was in law school administration, that's the number one thing I would tell prospective students and even high school students thinking of law or beginning into undergrad. I would always say, “Study what you love in undergraduate school or college. Major in something that you have an interest in because you will do better academically and a higher grade point average increases your chances of getting into law school.” 

Take a major in something you are interested in because you will do better academically, and a higher grade point average increases your chances of getting into law school.  

There isn't necessarily a primer for law school. When I got in and started my first year, I thought, “I'm in a room with a bunch of History, Political Science and Pre-Law majors. Some people even had Master's degrees already. I'm going to get my clock claim with a Music degree.” I found out that a lot of those courses score reading orchestration and courses that honed my attention to detail and skills helped me in law school. 

After the first semester, I realized, “I can hold my own with anyone.” That's what we think. We think that maybe children of lawyers and judges might have a leg up in law school academically. That's not true. Think, read and understand that you can do well in law school, not just succeed in law school. That was my number one message. I would give prospective students, “Study what you love in college and not the degree you have to have to get in. Fine-tune your reading comprehension, analytical and reasoning skills. It'll take you a long way in law school.” 

There are many corollaries to thinking about the things that you like. It'll help you figure out what you like within the law because instead of saying, “I like Political Science, History or English,” all the typical majors, the way your mind works and what you like to study and the hard problems you like to solve are sometimes easier to see when you're outside of, “I'm in one of the typical things I should be doing. I feel like I'm doing the right thing for Pre-Law.” In this way, you can examine it a little bit more and what you like and what you'd like to do with your Law degree when you get out.  

I tried to tell them to keep the focus on developing the skillsets to be a good law student first and foremost and then rest assured that once you complete law school, there will be opportunities out there that don't just involve the practice of law as in one going into a courtroom because you can be a transactional lawyer or having that knowledge that the Law degree will enable you to do a better job at being CEOs of companies, running nonprofits and all those things that we know many lawyers do that don't involve practicing law. Some people haven't even taken a bar exam using their Law degree still. 

What caused you to consider serving on the bench? 

That's an interesting thing too because for women in particular but for people in general, sometimes you don't even think about things until it's put before you. I'm one of those people. I'm not one who does things with passion. People say, “Do what you are passionate about. Make a living doing something you're passionate about. Doing or take your passion and create it into a job.” That's not me. It's never been me, quite frankly. I never thought about going to the bench or being a judge until it was mentioned to me by someone. 

When I say, “I don't think about it,” as explained to one of my colleagues, being on the Ohio Supreme Court was not fathomable to me. I grew up as a child in the Hough Neighborhood of Cleveland, which is a pretty poor community that was the subject of riots in the ‘60s. Both of my parents were deceased but neither had any education in high school. My mother, who was raised in the segregated South, where the schools are only for colored children, only went until eighth grade. 

Higher education wasn't in our background and the women in my community worked as store clerks or occasionally there would be a couple of teachers or nurses. As kids, we don’t think about anything outside of what we saw. I didn't even know what a Supreme Court justice was, let alone want to be one. Even as I got older, I went to law school and knew what judges and justices were. Those were still positions for other people. I'm not exactly sure who that other people category was but for some reason, I never thought about it for myself. 

I never thought forward in my career trajectory at law school. It's like you’re finished and get a Law degree. I remember vividly classmates of mine and I talking about we were going to be a lawyer at the place that paid us the most money. As it got closer to graduation, we were going to be lawyers at a place that hired us. The priority changed. For me, it was to learn as much as you can where you are and keep your eyes open for opportunities. At one point, someone asked me while I was either a law professor or an assistant dean if I ever thought about being a judge.  

I remember my first response was, “Absolutely not.” He said, “Why?” This person was not a lawyer so I thought that he was thinking that he met a trial court judge. That's mostly what people think about judges. I said, “I don't think I could stand to see the inhumanity against a man that trial court judges or at least those on general divisions or criminal courts see in crime than I had already encountered that early stage saved my life less than stellar law practice.” As a judge, I would want to tell the client, “You might want to get another lawyer because this person is not doing a good job. I don't think I could do that.” 

This person, much to my surprise, not being a lawyer said, “What about the appellate court or the Court of Appeals because that's more in line with what you've done as a law professor with researching, reading and writing?” The light went on that day. I had no idea what it took. I wasn't politically connected. No one in my family had ever run for an elected office. The only office I ever ran for was student council president at my high school and was successful there. That was my first campaign when I was 17 or 18. I went through and did the business of finding out what it took to run in my community to get to the appellate court. It was an uphill battle. There hadn't been a lot of people in the court that looked like me. I hadn't been a trial court judge before. 

Your reason for not being a trial court judge is a unique one but it's certainly one that somebody who has certain gifts that are matched for the appellate court might not be the best match for the trial court, yet very often the case is, “You have to be a trial court judge before you can be on the appellate court.” That in itself is a challenge to decide to go for the appellate court first. 

It was a huge challenge. When I first started running, which was in the late ‘90s to early 2000s, the mindset was you pay your dues on the trial court and then you run for the appellate court. I always run for an open seat. I believe people should run for whatever seat they're eligible for. However, I was not one to run to knock someone off because they belong to another political party or I think I had a better name. I only ran for an open seat. Every time there's an open seat, a trial court judge would want to run for it too. I was a political novice. I made the point to speak to as many judges as I could, all of whom opened the doors for me to have conversations on both sides of the political spectrum. 

Male, female, Black, White, republican and democrat were all gracious enough to spend the time to tell me what it would take. I had to start making those political connections. Every time I ran up in the primary, I would come up against a trial court judge whose name had been on the ballot so many times and most voters don't know the difference between an appellate court judge and a trial court judge. They'd say, “I recognize that name and would vote for it.” 

It took me three times to run to get out of a primary for the appellate court and finally got into a primary where due to some circumstances that are much too long to get into, I ended up running against two male lawyers in a primary, not trial court judges. They split their vote. I came up to the middle. In the county I lived in, once you won the primary as a member of a certain political party, you were pretty much going in for the general election, won that election and then re-elected two times without opposition. 

There are a couple of things in there. The first is having someone help see something in you that helps turn the light bulb on. There are a lot of things like that, especially on the bench. You hold members of the bench in very high regard. It can be hard to think like, “I could see myself there.” Often my friends who are on the bench have a little bit similar stories, although they're usually lawyers or judges who have said something to them saying, “You would be good at this. Have you considered applying for or seeking an election to one of these open judicial seats?” It usually takes a couple of times for people to say something like that before people go, “I could see myself there. I should look into that.” That's one of the things that is a little bit different. We benefit from that kind of nudge a little bit more frequently than men. 

For me, it wasn't even as much as seeing myself there once I got past that for my childhood. I do think when for teenagers and kids, them having examples of people doing different things, particularly people who look like them. Here is a good thing. By the time it got to my being a lawyer, it wasn't even as much seeing myself in the position as it was seeing myself doing that particular kind of work. We do different things as lawyers. 

It was like, “I wanted to do the work of the appellate court.” You can do that work in different ways. Being on the bench, being a judicial attorney or a lock clerk for the court, being a staff attorney or a commissioner, the various roles that people play in the courts. All of that is doing the work but being on the bench and being a member of the court is the highest level of doing the work. I thought I could perform at that level, which was the most motivating factor for me trying to get there.  

The show has been interesting because each state has different ways of selecting its judges at different levels even, whether it's election, appointment or some combination of a nominating commission that gives names to the governor that then does the appointment. There are many different ways to do it. There's a Civics lesson in itself in how each state does that. It's important to understand like, “I have to investigate to find out what is that I need to do. If I think I could do that job well, how do I get there? Is it an appointment or an election?” 

A lot of lawyers who are interested in the bench, especially the appellate bench, if it were an election route, they'd be a little gun-shy about that because that isn't a natural sense of what we would do. It jars a little bit with what we think we want to be on the bench, which is not partisan or political but applying the law and deciding the cases in front of us. That can be a little challenging but good for you for taking on the challenge several times.  

Not only it is a little challenging but it’s also disconcerting because doing the job or having the qualifications to do the job is different. It places such a small part if any in some regard than getting elected to do the job. They are two different processes that are, in my opinion, so far apart from each other. You have to learn how to do both. 

In my opinion, the most important part is doing the job but if you don't get there, you never get the chance to do it. It's unfortunate whether we have the appointment, election or retention system. It's important to learn how to get there. There are many people I have seen that are not successful because they don't separate the two and cannot understand how somebody, as qualified as they are, wouldn't be elected to the position that they want to do.  

Whether we have the appointment system and the election system or retention system, it's important to learn how to get there.  

Learning and understanding what are the different skills and things that are necessary to get there and then to be there, to navigate that in a way that you feel comfortable with and you feel like you can maintain your integrity in doing something that feels comfortable to you. There are some people I know who are on the bench who never got comfortable with the more political part but they had sponsors, mentors or those who were quite good at the political part and advocated on their behalf. That's the other thing I've seen. That doesn't work when you're doing an election. That can work with appointments but in an election, you have to be savvy yourself and know what kind of team you need to help you go through the election process. 

You don't get it if you're an elected place by yourself. 

There are many different moving parts to that for sure. Once you got to the Court of Appeals, was it the work you expected and you enjoyed it?  

When I got to the Court of Appeals, the work was exactly what I expected. No surprises whatsoever. I spent those years trying to be the best appellate court judge I could be, build consensus when I could and try to be a good colleague and elected official or public servant in my community. I continue teaching law students Law. Our legal education is always a part of what I do. I would take as many externs as I could. Even one of our local law schools had an evening program for students who had to continue to work and go to law school part-time. 

I even created, at least within my chambers, a way for those students to do an externship with me because oftentimes students who have to work full-time don't get those opportunities to extern in courts and public defender's offices or prosecutor's offices because the government offices shut down at 4:00 or 5:00 and they're getting off from work. I created a way that evening students or part-time students could also extern with me. We stay late or meet with them a couple of times on weekends. 

We don't need to even meet personally. We can do things by Zoom when your technology's working fine. Those were the things. Nothing was surprising at the appellate court. The only thing that happened at the appellate court that did surprise me is two years after I got there being approached to run from the Supreme Court. I thought, “I got to the Court of appeals. Are you kidding me? Let me learn this job.” That began probably to plant the seed for what would eventually be my 2018 run and a successful run to the Ohio Supreme Court.  

Sometimes it takes time or you feel that it's not the right time but it can plant the seeds down the road. That's great that you were intentional about opening the externship opportunities to those who are working full-time and have a different school schedule. I've taught in several different law schools as an adjunct. I enjoyed teaching in the night program of one of the schools with people who had full-time jobs. They were very driven and had a mission for why they were there and what they were doing. 

Many of them were quite excellent. It's important to make sure they have a lot of different opportunities to discover what it is they want to do. I remember one of my students who was an engineer and he was feeling like, “Maybe I'm not going to practice law because I don't find a fit for me, my personality and what I'm good at. “ 

He discovered that he liked the reading, writing and work of the appellate practice seminar that we were in. He discovered, “I could practice and do something like this.” Thinking of more opportunities for him to get exposure to that when he was in school. There are limitations to that because everything happens during the day when they have their other jobs. It's great to see that. What do you think about that in terms of there's a gap here in what kinds of experiences they can have and how can you fill that? 

I try to do that all the time. A lot of times we don't think about things because we don't think about them. We don't mean to intentionally exclude and not be of assistance in every way we can but sometimes you don't know what you don't know. I come from a law school background or academia, having worked there for over a decade. Before I got to the bench, I was very well aware of student needs. I had a fresher or different perspective being on the bench coming from being with law students and law school applicants and combining those two experiences to say, “Let's make the best of as much as we can for law students.”  

That's something that is a recurring theme of all of these things. All of our experiences come together for us to contribute unique things like your background with law students, counseling them and things like that, thinking about those things in your new role and being able to add that opportunity for them and think about that. Somebody who didn't have those experiences may not have been thinking about it in the same way you were. All of our different experiences are cumulative in what we end up contributing to the world. You ran for Ohio Supreme Court. How was that compared to your initial runs for the Court of Appeal? Was it a different experience or not?  

It's like night and day, although I was successful in my first and only run for the Supreme Court. It took me three times to get to the Court of Appeals. The difference is I was running to get to the Court of Appeals as a candidate or a lawyer and then I was running to get to the Supreme Court already as a tourist. The field is a lot narrower for running statewide. Running statewide is daunting and people are not lined up to do it. It's expensive and time-consuming. You could never do enough.  

The major political parties narrow the field and rarely even have contested primaries when running for the Supreme Court. I was on an appellate court that was only comprised of one county. In Ohio, there are 12 appellate districts but 3 of those districts are 1-county districts. Those are in large communities like Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus. In Cleveland, the county where I live, I had to run countywide. Granted it's a large county but it's one county where some of the other appellate districts might be comprised of 7 or 14 counties. We even have 1 appellate district that's comprised of 17 counties. That is not the same. 

When you run for the statewide court, the Supreme Court, there are 88 counties in Ohio. It's daunting. It was very different. Although what's not different is you as a candidate. I never tell people to vote for me. I tell people why I'm running for the position and why I think I would be the better candidate or the best candidate if there are more than two of us. I would leave literature or a way to look up more about me or read endorsements. I say, “If you like what you read, I'd appreciate that if you'd consider voting for me.” I'm turned off by people who tell me to vote for X, Y and Z. I'm turned off when the parties or people tell me to do that like, “Vote for John Doe.” How about, “This is John Doe's platform. This is what John Doe thinks could be done. If you like what you read, I'd appreciate your vote.” 

When you're running statewide, you're always in campaign mode. When I stopped at gas stations to get gas, which I did often running statewide, I'd hand my literature to someone else next to me getting gas, introduce myself, running for Supreme Court, “This is a piece of my literature. If you like what you read, I'd appreciate your consideration.” Most people would say, “I will look at it,” as opposed to taking your literature and throwing it away. Particularly for me as a woman of color, you could hand someone something and they can immediately think, “There's no way in God's screening Earth I'm voting for you because of XYZ,” or whatever reasons to give. 

If I say, “Read this,” and it changes your mind about what you might have initially thought about me based on the visuals, then you're giving some serious thought or consideration to at least how you cash your vote assuming you're going to vote at all. You can't do enough. It's expensive and tiring. We may have discovered in the elections in Ohio, it seems that most people will default to 1 of the 2 political parties that control every aspect of our governments across the country.  

One of the challenges, there are many, of running for judicial offices is that people will not vote because they feel that they can't get enough information about someone who's a candidate like, “How do I know whether this person is qualified? What are their views on things?” This education component, essentially that you're doing by campaigning is important. Here in California when judges are up for election, although we largely have appointments and there are situations of elections or retention elections, there are many people who want to be knowledgeable voters, no matter what party who will say, “How do I find out about the judges because I don't know how to find that information?” 

The bar associations will do some ratings based on, “Is someone qualified? Do they have the qualifications to be in this position?” That's helpful. I feel like the voters can find it hard to get that kind of information about judges and will not vote because they'd rather not vote if they don't have information or knowledge about the candidate. 

It’s similar in Ohio, except for all of our judges at every level. In Ohio, the municipal, trial courts, appellate courts and the Supreme Court are all elected positions. There are appointments if their vacancies before terms are over but even those appointments have to run at the next available election to retain the seat. The local bar associations and the state bar also do endorsements. Some will give a recommendation. We have a judicial votes count website that is hosted by our bar association. It doesn't endorse one way or the other. It allows all candidates the opportunity to put their information there. 

It's a great tool because you can go to your county and see every judicial candidate running in your county that you can vote for at the state level, appellate court level and county level. You can at least see their backgrounds whether they've served as a judge and what work they've done. It gives you some information. If you're not a lawyer, you still might say, “It still doesn't tell me what I need to know to pick the better candidate or the best candidate,” but it gives you some information. At the end of the day, unfortunately, because of how politicized our elections are, a lot of people default to the political party. 

Especially in the judicial elections. That is a nonpartisan position. We should be looking at an individual on their qualifications. At least there's an opportunity to find that out. To me, that's always can be the hard part of how you find out about the candidates for judicial office. 

In the free branches of government, the judiciary, I don't think there should be any political party affiliation at any level of electing judges. The more political we make those elections or appointments and not to say, there are some political processes even involved in the selection, but we weaken the judiciary the more we politicize it.  

On the other hand, elections do give an opportunity, especially early on for those who might not be as represented on the bench to at least put themselves out to the voters and have that opportunity to be there and become a judge. I know that was true early on out here in California. You could be elected. You could at least put your name on the ballot and potentially be chosen. That was your alternative to going through the political vetting process. That led to more diversity on the bench in terms of experience and several different ways. 

We're more concerned about that and focused on that from an appointment perspective as well. Sometimes there are opportunities for that. It takes a certain amount of you to have the courage to go through the election process and a very strong sense of yourself. Many things are flying different ways and people are saying whatever they're saying. You have to have a very strong sense of yourself to go through that process. That's probably a good thing once you're on the bench to have a strong core. 

You've spent several years on the appellate courts at the intermediate and then at the Supreme Court. Do you have any good tips for advocates in terms of appellate advocacy, whether it's an oral argument in front of your current court or brief writing? Anything that makes your job easier that maybe you wish you'd known when you were in practice. 

Even when I was on the Court of Appeals but particularly at the Supreme Court, the level of advocacy is pretty high. The members of our bar prepare themselves when they come before us. They recognize the fact that they better be well prepared when they come before us. Not all lawyers are but the overwhelming majority of them are. It almost makes no sense to not be well prepared, even if you're a lawyer who doesn't like to stand up and speak in front of people or get nervous coming before 1 judge, right alone, 7. The best way to help get rid of some of those jitters is to look at lawyers who have been there, either come down and sit in a hearing yourself or all of our oral arguments are archived on our website.  

The best way to help get rid of some of those jitters is to look at lawyers who have been there. 

You can go back and look at it. Particularly if it's an argument with an issue or an area of law that you're going to be arguing or that you're addressing because not only do you get a feel for how the hearing flows but for what the justices are thinking. Sometimes what a particular justice might key or hone in on. It's always interesting to me when a lawyer gets up and says to me or one of my colleagues, “As Justice so and so stated in state versus so and so in opinion,” and will quote a rule of law or something that we said. It shows the bench that you've done your homework. You know what you're talking about. 

It gives you a little more credibility. The winner of the case should be whoever has the law on his or her side all the time. Those are things that make for a good appellate advocate. The second one I would say is recognizing that you are at the highest level of the appellate court system, as opposed to a trial court where there's a jury. Sometimes trial lawyers argue before us. They're a real demonstrative. They're talking to us like we're in a jury box.  

We want to go counselor, “Do you recognize who we are?” Not putting on your trial court hat when you're arguing in the appellate court is different. Your time is limited. You can't convince us with your flair and emotion. That gets me when you bring emotional scenarios before us. This is a tragic case where someone is like, “My client lost his leg.” That's tragic but that's not before us. Recognizing that when you're in an appellate court, it's about the law, the standard of review, policy, whether there's been legislation in the particular area that's changed. It's not about appealing to our sensibilities and emotions.  

Especially at the Supreme Court level, it's about the case in front of you but also you're deciding and setting standards in some cases for the state. You're thinking about the case in front of you but also how about this rule that someone's arguing for? What would that impact be? Maybe in some cases, we haven't yet seen facts that aren't right in front of us but are something we're concerned about. 

At least at our level all the time for the states, it's particularly on jurisdictional appeals that we take in because you got four or more votes. If we take it in, it's got to be a matter of great or public interest to the state. We will oftentimes ask, “What rule of law would you want to come out of this case going forward?” Remembering for lawyers too who have to get into a court by a jurisdictional appeal or the Supreme Court. You can't just make it about your client because we are not an error-correcting court. 

There are cases where I've looked at and said, “I think the Court of Appeals got this one wrong but I don't accept it for review because the only thing we could do is reverse the appellate court and correct the error but it has no significance outside of that particular litigation. We don't take it in. I won’t vote to take it in.” Oftentimes we don't vote to take it in. To try to get in the door, remember you have to frame your proposition of law, your issue to be in a way that, “This court should decide it because this is the far-reaching effect of if this case stands or this court should have a say in this particular area because of its wide-reaching effects, not just a travesty and injustice to your client.  

That's a good point in terms of discretionary review and what the court is looking at in deciding whether to take the case, to begin with. Those are good tips for remembering where you are and preparing. I enjoy doing what you said in terms of listening to prior arguments with the same judges and panel or similar cases. You want to check out the field before game time. You want to have preparation in that regard and understand where members of the court have ruled in the past, what have they thought about similar issues and to be aware of that. That's a lot of preparation or a short argument, 15 or 30 minutes. That's what it is. What makes the oral argument fun is preparation. If you don't do it, it's not fun. 

It could be painful.  

Not only fun but affirmatively, not good at all. What about brief writing? Is there anything in particular that you look at first when you're reading the briefs like the table of contents or do you tend to read one brief first? 

I always start with the appellant's brief. That's the brief why we're here. That's the person's appeal. People write briefs differently. I'm not one to spend a lot of time on an introduction that goes on for pages. For me, this is how the advocate wants us to see how the case should be decided. I'd rather find out what the facts are, what the appellate court did and what the appellate court’s reasoning was and then read why you're telling me that reasoning was right or wrong. 

I don't like generally being spoonfed about how I should think about the case. Although I have some colleagues who do like that. They like saying, “This is the path you should take.” I'd rather reserve that judgment because that's not what the other side is going to say. Sometimes they say, “You take this path but then this is where you make the turn.” I rather have what happened, what the public court did and then why that was right or wrong in the authority that supports that. Just because you have a certain page limit, don't feel like you have to fill up and make the brief that page limit. If you say what you need to say and be sure that's thorough and exhaustive, then stop. If that's only half your page limits, be it.  

It takes longer to write a shorter brief. There are lots more edits and versions to do that. It does crystallize your thinking and you want to be respectful of the court's time. Narrowing it down is helpful. It also helps your thinking as an advocate. You're like, “What are the key things? What exactly needs to be decided? What are the clear paths to the various results that we want?” It helps you crystallize by continuing to edit. What kind of advice would you give to someone who might be considering the bench at some point in their career? 

First and foremost, learn everything you can about that particular job. It's not only getting to the bench. That's a lesson generally that can apply to any aspect. For electric positions, I often tell young people and anybody who puts themselves in that category but particularly high school students and people in college, “Find out what your state representative, state senator, local school board member or city council member does.” 

“Find out what backgrounds are missing and see if you have a background or work experience that can add to what those positions need to help your community or a particular branch of government. Find out everything that is entailed in that job as opposed to running for the job or wanting the job because you want the title or you think you can make a difference. Figure out or know exactly how you can make a difference. Find out all of what the job entails. Second, find out what it takes to get that job.” 

It's what I had to do with running for the Court of Appeals for the first time. Some people come into families that naturally do that. You've done it when you were a kid. You worked on a parent’s or an uncle's campaign. You know what it takes but for those who don't have that, then you have to find out what it is and not roll out of bed one day and decide you're going to run for judge, go file a petition and do it. 

Although I guess you can roll out a bed, file a petition and win an election if your name is right depending on your community or if your political affiliations are right. I wouldn't recommend that. Those are the two things that are first and foremost, finding out what the job is, what it all entails, why it is you think you would be a good person for that job, what will it take for you to get it and finding that out before you put your foot in the water to do it. 

All of those things are important, what the process is to getting there and what's involved. I like that looking at what you can provide if there's some particular experience or background that's missing, especially in a multimember court or as a city council. You can look at that and say, “There's a specific thing that I can add.” Finding out what the job is also that you can say, “Aside from the title, the image or whatever it is that one thinks about this job, this is what's involved. Would I enjoy doing that?” That's an important question too. 

“Is there any value added from my doing specifically?” 

That's a good process all around with any position, a new position or something that you might be considering doing all of that research and thinking about all of those things before you put your toe in the water, apply and start working on it. Your experience shows, which I hope many people will get from this, that you can have many different turns and your career can evolve in ways that you might never have thought of. 

Certainly, you would go through all of those steps once you've started to think about, “I'd like to join the bench or do something else in the law.” It doesn't have to be a childhood dream or something that you worked on the whole time or else you can't do it. No. Things come up at different points being open to different opportunities and open-minded about different ways that you can serve. That's important to do. If you haven't had this thought since age eight, it's okay. You can consider it now and investigate if it's something that you would add value to.  

Many of us don't even know what we don't know. I always say, “Luck is when preparation and opportunity meet.” You can't necessarily control the opportunity but you can control the preparation. Wherever you are and whatever you're doing, you learn the most that you can learn and you do it well in whatever job you have because people are watching and recognize even when you don't think they are or you don't know that they are. Someone might say to you, “Did you ever think about doing X, Y or Z? Did you make a great X, Y or Z?” Those are the opportunities but if you haven't done the work to prepare for them, then you might not be ready for them.  

You can't necessarily control the opportunity but you can control the preparation. So, learn the most you can learn, and do well in whatever job you have.

That's an important point that resonates with what you said about building skills and being excellent at whatever it is that you're doing at that point in time. That is where people see things in you. They see your work and then they say, “Have you considered this? This might also be a good option for you,” because they've seen your work and the care that you take with it. 

I tell often tell students, “I do my work as a Supreme Court justice the same way I worked as a babysitter, a paper girl, a delivery person or an office worker. If I were your garbage collector, I would do my job the same way.” I remember saying that at a high school career day or something. One kid said, “What is there to be a garbage collector? You'd take the can, throw the garbage in and go on.” 

I said, “Yes, but your garbage can would be upright with the top on and wouldn't be laying across your flower bed or the top wouldn't be in one neighbor's yard and the can over in someone else. If you wanted it up against your garage door, that's where it would be, upright with the top on. There wouldn't be potato chip wrappers or cans left in front of your house because if it's spilled out. I would then get it and put it in the can.” 

It's not the title, the position or what you do. It's how you do it that you should always compensate for. One of the early things my mother taught me in life was, “You always try to do a job better than it's been done or you always try to leave the place better off than it was when you got there.” You add something to it and you don't go through the motions.  

I love your description of there are different ways to be a garbage collector. There's one way to do it. We leave it in a certain state, not another state or disarray. That's a practical way of saying there is a difference in how you perform the work and that matters. People appreciate it and see it. That's where they see other opportunities for people who take care of them in that way. I also like that of leaving something a little bit better than you found it, whether it's a place of work or whatever it is that you're doing. That's a great aspiration. You hope that's true.  

I learned how my mother did that after she died when I was going through some of her things. My mother worked for the United States Postal Service. In her things, which I never knew about when they were happening, there were commendation letters from her supervisor thanking her for suggesting a better way to do this or a system that they've put in place and letters thanking her for filling in when they were short, working overtime or coming in early. She practiced what she preached but she never talked or bragged about it.  

Sometimes our parents don't share those kinds of details with us, then you see it and you go, “There was a lot of integrity in what they told me and how they acted.” It's nice to see that. Thank you so much for doing this and participating in the show, especially with the various technical challenges we've had before this. I appreciate your fortitude, in going forward and having this chat. 

I enjoyed. Thank you for having me.  

To close, I'll ask a few little lightning-round questions. In your case, you have a lot of talents so I don't know what you would say about this. The first question is what talent would you like to have but don't?  

Maybe to be able to fly, be more in one place at a time and calm myself. I'm always amazed at the way pilots take off but particularly land, the way they fly these huge jets. I thought, “It'd probably be cool to be able to fly a huge jet and land it,” particularly those that land soft and perfect. Being 35,000 feet in the air to landing smoothly on the ground is a huge thing. Maybe fly an airline jet.  

I like that. It's a broad thought. It's remarkable when you're like, “We landed.” It was soft that you don't even notice that that was a skill. 

When you asked that question, the first thing I thought of was to bring peace on Earth but I thought, “That's not going to happen.” 

We'll narrow that down a little bit. It's a good thing to think about what each of us can do towards that in our particular part of the world. Who is your hero in real life?  

My hero is my mother and she's been gone for many years. Without a question, she was for me but real-life heroes, what I think of are those who lost and sacrificed their lives to save others on 9/11, particularly in New York and all the sites in Pennsylvania, DC and New York. New York is the one that will see our minds forever, those of us who were around New York at the time. To think about the men and women, I know they were primarily men who went up in a burning power to try to save as many people as they could. They had to know if they may or may not make it out. It is the most incredible act of heroism that I witnessed at least visually on television. I think about that time in our history often but the amount of sacrifice that happened on that day for others still takes my breath away.  

That's such a good reminder of the selflessness from that day. 

Many didn't survive and there are a lot who did but all of them.  

There were several who were heroes that weren't even their job, people who worked there, who helped coworkers and went back up to help other people. 

Those who did and didn’t officially are in the same group. Those who got paid to do it didn't matter, those who weren’t paid enough to do it and those who didn't get paid to do it. It was a reflection of who they were. It's more than what their positions or titles were.  

Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite as a dinner guest? It could be more than one person. 

It depends on if I have to do the cooking. If the answer is yes, then no one. 

You don't have to do the cooking. We'll figure out the cooking. Otherwise, this is just the conversation.  

That's a strange question for me because in a way the answer is I can't think of anyone. The other side of the answer is there are many people. I'd have them all and wouldn't be able to talk to any of them. They are on both sides of the spectrum. Some whom I don't hold in high regard like President Putin. I’ll say to him, “What is it that you are thinking?” Much of what's going on in Ukraine and the Open Soviet I don't understand but then I don't know that I would understand any better even if I had the explanation. That's why I go, “That would be a good one but that wouldn't be a good one.” I would think of people and eliminate people that way. At the end of the day, I end up sitting and having dinner with myself and that's okay.  

I like that openness to saying, “There are people I don't like what they're doing but I'd like to understand things.” Having that kind of perspective is a good approach to things instead of just discarding something and saying, “I'd like to learn more about that and what that person is thinking.” It says a lot about your openness to ideas. Last question, what is your motto, if you have one?  

The one that would be helpful to all of us in every walk in life and whatever we do is always try to look at things from one or more different perspectives before coming to a conclusion about anything. Sometimes we're so convinced that what we see and think is right. Other than the obvious, if you look at an apple, you go, “I'm sure that's an apple.” 

Look at things from one or more different perspectives before concluding anything. 

In the day to day life, particularly with regard to the things we see on TV or read in the newspapers or social media, it’s the preconceived notions we have about things. We realized that we filter everything through our unconscious biases, some even our conscious biases but more on our unconscious or subliminal thoughts about things that sometimes are unconscious biases that are positive and some that are negative but everything gets filtered through those. 

What we might think or perceive to be happening, the way we internalize something or judge something may not be what's happening. If we put ourselves from another perspective like the people we're looking at or the person who wrote what we're reading, things might seem a bit different. At least doing that before reaching a conclusion about something or then at the end of the day, recognizing that what we've concluded still might be wrong.  

That's particularly helpful. Sometimes people can be to see only one position. It's important to see that there are different perspectives. Thinking about what those might be and why they might be can open your eyes to things. 

I know some people say, “I know there are other perspectives but mine is the right one.” Bye, bother. 

There’s that stubbornness to certain views also but there's value in giving a little more consideration to different views because it can change your perspective by looking at that too. 

Recognizing that we all have our limited backgrounds, experiences and understanding. They don't equate or translate necessarily to all walks of life. We are who we are because of our experiences and backgrounds. We would be different if we had different experiences and backgrounds.  

Thank you so much for having this discussion and joining the show. I enjoyed it and learned a lot. I appreciate your joining.  

Thank you for everything. Stay safe. I appreciate you inviting me to this show.  

Thank you so much and safe travels.  

Have a good day.