A Passion for Justice
On and off the bench, Barbara Pariente (COM’70), chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court, is extending the reach of justice.
by
Jean Hennelly Keith
When lawyers stand before Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Barbara Pariente, they’d best have their homework done. With a reputation for meticulous preparation, she scrutinizes oral arguments for precision and reason. Appointed a justice to the state Supreme Court seven years ago by Governor Lawton Chiles, she was sworn in as chief justice last July. During her tenure, Pariente (COM’70) has frequently grappled with high-profile, controversial cases, many involving questions of the law in matters of life and death.
Take the Terri’s Law case, for example. Last September, Pariente gave the Supreme Court’s opinion on the law, which drew national attention. An accident fourteen years earlier had left forty-year-old Theresa “Terri” Schiavo severely brain-damaged and unable to survive without life support. Although she had left no written instructions, her husband, Michael Schiavo, maintained that she would not have elected prolonged life-extending measures. Florida’s lower courts ruled that Schiavo, as guardian for his wife, could have her nutrition and hydration withheld, which he did in October 2003. Her parents objected and lobbied the governor’s office and the Legislature, which quickly passed what was called Terri’s Law, granting the governor the power to intercede. Governor Jeb Bush had the feeding and hydration tube reinserted six days after it was pulled.
The Florida Supreme Court unanimously struck down Terri’s Law as an encroachment on the state constitution’s fundamental doctrine of separation of powers. “It is without question an invasion of the authority of the judicial branch for the Legislature to pass a law that allows the executive branch to interfere with the final judicial determination in a case,” Pariente wrote. “We are not insensitive to the struggle that all members of Theresa’s family have endured since she fell unconscious in 1990. However, we are a nation of laws and we must govern our decisions by the rule of law and not by our own emotions.”
Similarly, after the 2000 presidential election, the national spotlight was on the Florida Supreme Court. When the state was bogged down in multiple vote recount lawsuits, the court unanimously required Secretary of State Katherine Harris to extend deadlines for receipt of recounts, and after Harris declared George Bush the winner, to conduct a statewide recount of certain ballots. Pariente says that the greatest challenge the court faced during that tumultuous time was “coordinating the logistics of a very complex set of legal cases within a very limited time frame. Having oral arguments one day and issuing a full opinion the next is a rarity.” Although the Florida court’s decision to continue the count was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court — intervening in a presidential election for the first time — on the grounds of equal protection under the law, Pariente is proud of how her court conducted business: “with great skill, augmented by tremendous dedication.”
Impartiality, says Pariente, is what distinguishes justices from legislators and governors, who are elected to follow the will of the people. At the Supreme Court, “we are obligated by our canons of ethics to put aside popular opinion, and to the extent humanly possible, decide these cases based on principles of law and the state and federal constitution.” But it is not always easy. “It is a tremendous challenge,” she says. “It’s what makes a judge different from any other kind of public servant. Fundamental to our very core function is that you put aside your personal viewpoint. It is not an issue of whether you’re for or against the death penalty,” for example, which Florida has in place. “I’ve got to make decisions based on the law.”
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| Chief Justice Barbara Pariente discusses a case in her chambers with Justice Kenneth B. Bell, the newest member of the Florida Supreme Court. |
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Supreme Court justices must also consider a law’s constitutionality and interpret the constitution. “A constitution is not always black-and-white. If it were,” Pariente says, “you probably would not need judges; you would not need any interpretations.” Charges made in the recent presidential election that “activist judges” found same-sex marriages either constitutional or unconstitutional in their states frustrate her. The media’s demand for sound bites, she thinks, has led over the past twenty or so years to labeling as liberal or conservative judges as well as politicians. In her view, the activist label applied to judges is meaningless. “It’s a label placed on a judge whose decision you disagree with,” she says. “If evidence is seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment [protection from illegal search and seizure], then judges are obligated to suppress that evidence. That is required under their oath of office. They are not being activist judges, and it is not a technicality. It is based on the constitution [of the United States].”
Social Conscience
Growing up in New York City, Pariente was attracted to a career in communications, and when she later attended the School of Public Communication (now the College of Communication), she majored in broadcast journalism. In a course on the First Amendment, she was fascinated by U.S. Supreme Court cases and the decisions of great justices such as Oliver Wendell Holmes. Prompted as well by history and government courses taught by College of Arts and Sciences Professors Howard Zinn and Murray Levin, she says, she began to wonder, “How do you make changes? I started to see the legal system as a way to effect change.” She volunteered for organizations that helped parents on welfare better understand their rights. “I realized that there were many powerless individuals,” she says, “without a voice to secure basic housing.” A summer volunteer job in legal services in New York’s Lower East Side and a junior-year student project making a documentary on Harvard’s new legal services program piqued her interest in a legal services career and prompted her to apply to law school.
Pariente graduated magna cum laude from BU and was fifth in her 1973 class at George Washington University Law School. She married and moved to Florida, where for the next two years she clerked for a federal district court judge, gaining insight into the judicial branch and building a foundation for her legal career. In 1975 she joined the law firm Cone, Wagner and Nugent. “Barbara was the only woman in the office,” former colleague Louis Silber says. “In the 1970s, if we had 5 to 6 percent women in law school, it was a lot.” Women lawyers were scarce and women trial lawyers in Florida quite rare. “Back then, it wasn’t easy for a woman trial lawyer,” he says. “Partners would take the men to football games and stop off at a strip club along the way.” Pariente became a partner in 1977. That same year she had her son, Joshua, and returned to work three weeks after he was born.
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As chief administrative officer of the State Courts System, Pariente is briefed by Lisa Goodner, State Courts administrator. |
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Eventually Silber and Pariente formed their own firm. As civil trial attorneys, they specialized in personal injury cases. Their partnership continued for ten years, until Pariente was appointed a judge on the Fourth District Court of Appeal. Silber describes his former partner as an “extremely meticulous, detailed lawyer, probably the most prepared lawyer I’ve ever worked with.” Beyond her abilities in the courtroom, including being able to persuade with an “affidavit face,” Silber says, well after the cases were closed and the money received, Pariente maintained close relationships with her clients, many of whom had been seriously injured. “For Barbara it wasn’t about the money,” he says. “It was more about helping people.”
Pariente, who is only the second woman chief justice in Florida’s 160-year history and one of fewer than twenty nationally, recalls that when she started out as a trial lawyer, there were “certainly no women on any of the highest courts and very few women in the Congress and state legislatures.” Women have made enormous strides in the legal profession during the last thirty years, she acknowledges, but “we would be naïve to think there are no longer stereotypes about women’s place in society. There is also a real tension between being a good mother and being a successful lawyer, since women in so many families end up being the primary caregivers to their children. So yes, we’ve made strides, but I think that the workplace still has not really taken into account that family should be promoted whether you are a man or a woman.”
“I always thought Barbara could be anything she wanted to be,” says her sister, Susanne Pariente (CGS’75, CAS’77), a psychotherapist in Marblehead, Massachusetts. “Growing up, we were on the edge of change for women; she was a wonderful role model and mentor for what women could do with their lives.”
Equal Justice
With a replica of Rodin’s The Thinker in the entryway and a stack of personal scrapbooks on the coffee table, the reception area to Pariente’s chambers reflects her combination of serious intellect and joie de vivre. Dressed in a professional black suit, but with a bright orange bracelet peeking out at the sleeve, the Chief, as her staff call her, warmly welcomes the next visitor. Settling into a comfortable chair in her chambers, the petite fifty-six-year-old elucidates a set of goals, each with the underlying theme of better access to justice: ensuring a smooth transition to newly mandated state-funded courts, expanding civic education, integrating more technology in the justice system, and improving treatment of families and children in the unified family court.
Pariente is overseeing the move to state funding of Florida’s courts, which until 2004 had been inequitably funded by counties. “It really is critical that citizens in this state have access to the same quality and level of justice,” she says, “no matter where they live, from the Keys to the Panhandle.” Expansion of civic education programs to further public understanding of the judicial branch of government is also of great importance to her. She enthusiastically describes a plan to include high school students in moot court competitions of the sort usually found only in law schools. In a program possibly unique in the nation, students would compete at the state appellate courts and the finalists argue in front of Florida’s Supreme Court on Law Day in May.
Pariente is a strong proponent of using technology to make the state justice system more efficient and accessible by increasing electronic filing, record-keeping, and communication in Florida’s sixty-seven counties. She is proud that Florida was one of the first states in the country to have a Web site that posts broadcasts of Supreme Court oral arguments live and in their entirety.
Children First
Family law is a passionate concern of Pariente’s. Such cases, which can involve divorce, child support, paternity, custody, adoption, and juvenile delinquency, call for improved case management and coordination, says Pariente, who chaired the Supreme Court’s Steering Committee on Families and Children in the Courts. Toward this end, Florida is putting into place a unified family court system. Unlike states that appoint or elect judges to hear family cases exclusively, Florida has a unified court system, in which all judges are qualified to hear the full range of cases. To act in the best interest of children, in Pariente’s opinion, a judge needs perspective on all the interrelated issues that a family might face. An advocate of nonadversarial resolution of disputes, she says that “in a delinquency case, for example, where it is not a matter of guilt or innocence, a judge would know that the family is going through a divorce and that there has been a charge of domestic violence.” While “the courts are not social workers,” she says, “we are dealing with complex underlying social issues, and so it is incumbent on the judicial system to ensure the best results for the child.” She believes in strengthening the family relationship through the courts, taking a close look at cause and effect, and is an active proponent of treatment-based drug courts as alternatives to incarceration or termination of parental rights. “A lot of parents in the welfare system are not there because they intentionally inflicted harm on their children,” she says. “Many are there because they have neglected their children as a result of underlying addictions. So if we can get parents needed help and really monitor that treatment through the judicial system, then we have a chance of saving the family relationship.”
One of the most valuable ways of supporting youngsters outside of the legal system, Pariente is convinced, is mentoring: “The statistics on how much more likely it is for the child to stay in school when he or she has a positive role model show there is not anything more important than mentoring a child.” She initiated Books and Breakfast, a program for the most violent teenage girls in maximum security facilities that matches them, on the basis of good behavior, with women lawyers. They choose books and read them together.
Checks and balances
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In her first official act, newly installed Chief Justice Pariente gavels the court to order. At her left is Harry Lee Anstead, immediate past chief justice. Photograph by Ryals Lee |
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On and off the bench, Pariente is tenacious. Her thick brunette hair has grown back after chemotherapy for breast cancer in 2003. “Yesterday was one year since my last chemo treatment,” she says, indicating a vase of pink roses on the coffee table. “These roses are from a woman who is undergoing chemotherapy for lung cancer.” She is open and unsentimental in discussing the cancer, which she approached in characteristically analytical fashion, thoroughly researching all the options. After losing her hair, she took the bench wigless, deciding that the buzzed look was more her style. The flood of fan mail she received for what she thinks of as a simple gesture surprised her. “I’m glad if it helped other people,” she says.
Married to Frederick Hazouri, a judge on the Fourth District Court of Appeal, Pariente says the biggest initial challenge when she became a Supreme Court justice was adjusting to a “commuting marriage.” Now she and Hazouri take turns flying between their homes in Tallahassee and West Palm Beach to spend long weekends together. They each have children from a prior marriage and grandchildren as well.
Her ability to focus on a problem until it is solved is nearly unshakable, Hazouri says, and “her very compassionate heart never interferes with her objectivity. If you ask Barbara to review something, there will be no rubber stamp. She will give you a thorough review with an honest analysis and critique.”
Pariente is the catalyst for gatherings of her large family and extensive circle of friends. “She’s funny, she’s smart, and she’s very sweet,” says Emily Lieberman Tipermas (CAS’70), her college roommate and longtime friend. “Anyone would love to be around her. Barbara just has a lot of love flowing out in all directions.”
Juggling a high-level career, a blended family life, community volunteerism, and active connection with friends makes up her life these days. “Ideally I would like to have all the time in the world to address each of my priorities and to be deliberate on every decision I make,” she says, “but you do your best within the time you have.” It is a matter of attitude, she says: “You can allow yourself to become so stressed out that you are overwhelmed and say, ‘I can’t believe this is one more problem that I’m required to solve,’ or you can say, ‘Whoa, I’m learning something new — this is really terrific.’”
Photographs by Vernon Doucette unless otherwise noted
