Court of Appeals judge visits city
By Steve Herring
Published in News on April 4, 2016 1:46 PM
Full Size
News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Judge Linda Stephens talks about her campaign for re-election to the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
Conducting a nonpartisan judicial campaign is difficult because people want to talk about hot-button cases -- something no judicial candidate should do, said Court of Appeals Judge Linda Stephens.
Ms. Stephens, 65, who has been on the bench since 2006 having first being appointed by then Gov. Mike Easley is facing a November election challenge from Phil Berger Jr.
Berger is an administrative judge and the former Rockingham County district attorney. He is son of state Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger.
Court of Appeals judges serve eight-year terms and are elected in non-partisan elections.
Ms. Stephens is one of 15 judges that hear cases in panels of three.
She was in Goldsboro Tuesday for a reception at the law office of Phil Baddour and spoke at Tuesday night's meeting of the Wayne County Democratic Party at Wilber's BBQ restaurant where she spoke about what she believes is proper as well as improper to talk about in the campaign.
"Some judges and judicial candidates, myself included, don't think that judges should be talking about their personal views and opinions on political and social issues -- the hot-button topics of the day -- or on a specific legal issue because, in my view anyway, it has the capacity at least to undermine the confidence in the independence of the judicial official or the candidate for judicial office," she said.
"We have to be independent and apply the law and follow the rule of law even when it takes us to results that we don't personally agree with. That is what judges do. So, to me, to be willing to talk about my own personal opinions or views on some of the very complex and highly controversial issues of the day, or how I feel about a particular case that's maybe in the news, suggests that I may be willing to overlook what the facts of the case are and the law of the case that would lead to the correct result. Or I am pandering for votes."
Mrs. Stephens said she follows the law and tries to stay away from expressing any opinions.
"What I try to do to influence voters to consider me seriously, and hopefully vote for me, is to stand on my record, and I now have a record," she said. "My challenger does not have a record as a judge, although he is an administrative law judge now and has been for a year. So I guess there is something of a trial court record there.
"I have been on the court for 10 years. My opinions are all easily accessible. If you want to see how I have decided certain types of issues, it is easy to do the search and find the cases and read them. But what I try to do in reaching results in the cases that are assigned to me is to figure out what the law requires. More than once, thankfully not a lot of times, but more than once, the law required me to reach a result that was personally repugnant to me. That is the job. That is the oath that I took."
Mrs. Stephens said she relies on the record she has accumulated as a judge and on her willingness to work hard -- a character trait she credits on her upbringing by her grandparents in upstate South Carolina.
She said that while her grandparents lacked any formal education they understood that the only way for her to have a better life was through education.
"My grandmother told me my entire life while I was growing up that I could be anything that I wanted to be," Ms. Stephens said. "So I stayed in school, and I worked hard. If the (court) work require nights and weekends, I work nights and weekends. You just do what you have to do to get the job done. I hope the voters will consider the fact that from the time that I have been on the bench, including up to the current time in this current campaign, I have earned the support of a broad range of interest groups.
"I am supported by both Democrats and Republicans. I am supported by lawyers on both sides of cases. To me having that kind of broad bipartisan support, and the support of the lawyer groups regardless of which side of the controversy they represent, ought to tell the voters that I am what I make myself out to be -- just truly independent, impartial, right in the middle of the case until I figure out what the law requires me to do and then follow that result to the end."
Also, she has nearly 22 years of experience in private practice before joining the court.
Most voters aren't going to know what a Court of Appeals judge does, she said.
Ms. Stephens jokes that people often ask if she can fix a traffic ticket.
The court reviews the proceedings that occurred in the trial courts for errors of law or legal procedure and decides only questions of law -- not questions of fact, she said.
Also, direct appeals from certain of the state's administrative agencies, such as the Industrial commission that decides all worker's compensation cases, are heard by the Court of Appeals.
The court hears between 1,600 to 1,800 cases annually, she said.
"What we like to tell high school students is that our job requires us to write the equivalent of 125 term papers a year," she said. "There is a lot of research and writing, a lot of listening to arguments about what went wrong in the trial division, and what we should do fix it.
"We are an error-correcting court which means we just look to see whether a prejudicial error was committed in the trial court requiring a new trial or requiring another fix in the trial court. We don't make policy. We don't overrule precedent. That is for the Supreme Court to do."
Ms. Stephens earned a bachelor's degree in journalism, magna cum laude, from the University of South Carolina and her law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
She was the first female law clerk to Judge Fred Hedrick of the N.C. Court of Appeals; the first woman associate, and then the first female partner with her law firm; and the first woman to serve as president of the N.C. Association of Defense Attorneys.
Super Lawyers Magazine named her one of the top 50 women lawyers in the state.
Since joining the bench, she has earned the J. Robert Elster Award for Professional Excellence, and Lawyers Weekly's Women of Justice Award, presented for "leadership, integrity, service, sacrifice and accomplishment in improving the quality of justice and exemplifying the highest ideals of the legal profession."