This week on Connecticut power and politics,
Connecticut's Chief Justice announces his retirement.
He reflects on his influential career,
the race to replace retiring Bridgeport State Senator Marilyn Moore.
Candidate Scott Burns joins us to talk about his campaign
and the final phase of an important law to protect
our kids.
This is Connecticut Power and Politics.
And hello, and welcome to Connecticut Power and Politics.
I'm Mark Sudol, Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court.
Richard Robinson joins us now.
It's a pleasure to have you on the show.
Welcome.
Thank you for having me,
Mark.
Now you are retiring in September as the first African
American Chief Justice in Connecticut and spent a lot of
time in Stanford.
Did you ever imagine early in your career you will
be holding this top spot?
No, not at all. I,
I couldn't even imagine that I'd be a judge,
let alone one day become the
Chief Justice of state of Connecticut.
It's been such a great honor.
It's, it's been incredible. It really has been.
And you did spend some time in Stanford to get
to this point.
Tell us about that. I did.
I worked for the City of Stanford Law Department.
I started as a staff counsel.
By the time I left,
I was assisting corporation counsel
couldn't have a better career.
I was there for almost 16 years.
And so it was some of the best times of
of my career.
So why have you decided to retire?
Well, you know, it gives a lot of thought and
it's it's really time.
I've been doing this now for
24 years and I've been Chief Justice for
six years and it's been an incredible time.
It's that that old saying that may you live in
interesting times.
And some people wonder if that's a curse or not.
But I, you know, two of those years or three
of those years were COVID years.
And many people may not know this,
but the Connecticut judicial branch never shut down.
We can't. The things people do and need the judicial
branch for requires so the branch be open.
And I work with some remarkable people
from the beginning, people who are saying we got to
keep the branch open even though,
you know, COVID was just starting.
We didn't understand the disease.
But at
3435 hundred employees here and people want to get in
and work and make sure the branch was up and
running.
And after you told the governor about your plans,
he said he appreciated having you as a partner in
the state government and certainly all the challenges that you
had to deal with as you just spoke about
during the pandemic. What what else was,
was that like when you was,
it was such a, a,
a bizarre time, I think for all of us.
Yes. Well, one of the things about organization like judicial
branch and state of Connecticut in general is you have
what's called a continuing office organizational operation plan or coupe
plan. And our coup plans deal with a disaster.
But you think of a disaster as something short term,
you know, maybe a few days,
maybe a week, not something that goes on for years.
So we're going to have to rewrite that coup plan
to deal with situations like a pandemic,
things that no one ever faced before.
Where do you get a face mask from?
Where do you get various equipment from?
Do you have the technology to pull this off?
One of the the good things that came out of
all of that is that we made technological leaps forward
that will actually help us improve our access to justice.
We now have video conferencing that will remain part of
our function,
free, you know, for as long as you can see,
as well as other electronic things like electronic briefing.
So we've managed to modernize the judicial branch in ways
that we wouldn't have been able to do
before the epidemic.
So how did that work with the justices then?
We're each was each justice,
you know, separate remote. How did that work?
Yeah, we, we were remote for a good period of
time.
And then after we went from remote,
it doesn't mean that they were always home remote for
us was we had our hearings remote and often we
were here in the building working.
It's a very collegial, but it requires a lot of
cooperation with each other to get these opinions out.
There's seven justices on the Supreme Court,
9 judges on the appellate court.
And you have to keep going,
keep talking to each other to do the important business
of the branch.
So that that was all interesting and
terrifying at the same time.
I can imagine. Yeah. Now you were nominated as Chief
Justice back in 2018,
but you first came to the court in 2000.
What cases over the years stand out in your mind?
Well, the thing I have to tell folks is that
when you ask me what cases are the most important,
I will always say the case that I'm working on
is the most important case that I have.
That being said, when I think of all the cases
that I worked on,
one of the most important to me was a case
called Connecticut versus Holmes,
which was a a criminal defense case.
In in that case, we talked about something called Batson
versus Kentucky and that involves preemptive strikes on jurors.
There is this phenomena that people will,
some people will think that you shouldn't have a black
person on a jury if the
a black person is the defendant.
And that not only violates the rights of the defendant,
it violates the rights of the juror.
And so Holmes, we looked at the case and decided,
well, there's not nothing we can do about this particular
case,
but we can change the system.
And that started the jury task force and we implemented
myriad changes in the jury system that will bring more
procedural justice
to the system. And so I'm very,
very proud of of that.
That's one of the cases that stands out to me.
The other cases are cases where the death penalty cases,
which were very difficult. I never thought as a
child in in state of Connecticut that would ever really
have to deal with the death penalty.
Yet one of the first cases I got on the
Connecticut Supreme Court was Santiago versus Commissioner,
which was a death penalty case.
So I was on the court.
When we're going through that awful period of time
of trying to decide what to do in matters that
were literally between life and death.
What else are you most proud of?
The thing I'm most proud of working the employees that
I work with.
I mentioned earlier that during COVID,
when we thought COVID was 100%
deadly or just about 100%
deadly, employees of the judicial branch were calling me,
telling me and volunteering to come in to work the
front facing employees.
That is amazing. You hear all these
things about state employees or government employees in general,
but that they don't work as hard as everyone else.
That's not true. They work as hard and harder than
anybody else to come in during a pandemic
and risk your life. People were doing that,
and I'm so proud of them for doing that to
keep this important institution open
when the state needed it the most.
I mean, we all know this is a crazy world
that we live in now.
What are some of the challenges you think facing the
Connecticut Supreme Court as we go into the future?
There's a crisis in confidence involving court systems.
People, I think a lot of folks don't understand the
role of the court.
It's a limited role in our society.
You know, right now, society split almost
5050 when it comes to a lot of these issues.
And so if the court decides things one way,
50% of the people will be upset.
If they decided the other way,
50% of the people will be upset.
So no matter what we do,
50% of the people are going to be upset.
But, you know, we have to follow the rule of
law.
The The thing is, each justice or judge may a
little differently about what they feel the rule of law
is in that particular case.
But I believe that most by far,
judges and justices strive to follow the rule of law
even when the law takes into places they don't want
it to go.
We have our role. The legislature has its role.
The executive branch has its role and we have to
stay in our lane,
and that's a very difficult thing to do,
especially when you feel that the case
doesn't end in a way that you think it should.
But we have to follow along.
That's what we do
now. The governor has set no timetable to name your
successor,
but he is being lobbied for more diverse backgrounds on
the court.
Do you think there's enough diversity among our judges,
both at the Supreme Court level and local jurisdictions?
Let let me put it this way.
When I was an attorney and when I got onto
the bench,
the bench looked very different in the way it does
now.
There is far more diversity than there ever was.
What the governor's decision will be will be the governor's
decision.
I'm sure he will keep that in mind.
As a matter of fact,
he told me that he's keeping that kind of a
thing in mind,
among other things. And so I'm very proud to work
with Governor Lamont.
I'm glad he understands these these issues.
But yeah, that's the decision for the executive branch to
make.
And I know that he'll make the right decision regardless
of which member he picks,
if he picks a member of the court
or which judge he picks,
if it's a judge or,
you know, you, you can actually be a Chief Justice
and never have been a judge before.
Is there anything that's changed that you've seen in the
court system over the years in terms of like,
you know, technology and things like that that now are
being used in some cases?
Yes, absolutely. We, we do remote work now.
Sometimes it depends on the case and that really helps.
Think of it this way.
If you were a person who needed a reasonable accommodation,
that accommodation was a, a
video conference instead of showing up in person.
We can make that happen.
A lot of cases, a lot of situations,
parking and a parking traffic tickets,
for example, is one of those situations where you'd have
to take off hours and sometimes days off from your
job in order to make your court appearance.
Now we have the technology where you can actually talk
to the prosecutor over the phone or over the computer
and you don't have to miss a day at work.
And so that will make access to justice a lot
easier.
And the the quality of the access to justice has
really gone up.
So I'm very, very proud of that.
We actually do are a lot better at keeping people
in mind.
The whole person, you know,
if if you're working paycheck to paycheck and you have
to take off a day to come to court to
talk about a speeding ticket,
you may end up losing that job.
That won't happen anymore. So I'm very,
very proud of of making those kinds of changes.
Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court,
Richard Robinson, thanks for being with us.
Thanks for having me.