Council Confirms Dewar To Join SJC
Alison Kuznitz
Healey Appointee Will Break Up Baker Court
JAN. 10, 2024…..One year ago at this time, Elizabeth “Bessie” Dewar was the state’s top law enforcement official during a roughly two-week stint as acting attorney general. On Wednesday, she was confirmed as the newest justice of the state’s highest court.
There was little doubt that the Governor’s Council would confirm Dewar, the state solicitor tapped by Gov. Maura Healey to fill the Supreme Judicial Court seat that Justice Elspeth Cypher is giving up when she steps down at the end of this week to take a position at Boston College Law School. There was little resistance to Dewar’s nomination during her December hearing with the council, and councilors voted 7-0 Wednesday to approve her for the bench.
“This is just an amazing person and how welcome she’s going to be. And she has been involved in every type of law,” Councilor Marilyn Devaney said before the vote Wednesday. No other councilor spoke about the confirmation. “I was never so impressed with anyone as she … and she has compassion. That’s what I’m looking for.”
Healey said she was “thrilled” that Dewar was confirmed unanimously and said she looks forward “to swearing her in soon.”
“She’s an experienced attorney and a consensus builder who will make an excellent Supreme Judicial Court Justice,” the governor said in a statement.
Once she is sworn in, Dewar will be the first justice since Robert Cordy to sit on the SJC without already having been a judge in a lower court. A former federal prosecutor and top legal advisor to Gov. William Weld, Cordy was nominated by Gov. Paul Cellucci in 2000.
Dewar addressed her lack of judicial experience head-on during her confirmation hearing, telling councilors that she would bring “a lot of experience with the different courts of the commonwealth” to the SJC bench.
“I absolutely think it is crucial that the Supreme Judicial Court have a diversity of experience, and in particular, a diversity of experience with all the courts in the commonwealth. Every single one of them,” Dewar said.
The Jamaica Plain resident could apply that experience to the state’s highest court for more than a quarter-century. Dewar is 43 years old and won’t reach the state’s mandatory judicial retirement age of 70 until July 4, 2050.
Healey in 2016 named Dewar to serve as Massachusetts’s second state solicitor. In that role, Dewar supervised the briefing and arguing of appeals by attorneys throughout the attorney general’s office, advised the AG on exercising her authority to decide whether to appeal from adverse decisions, and led the office’s “friend of the court” amicus brief practice in state and federal courts.
Dewar had previously worked as an appellate and trial-level lawyer at Ropes & Gray, was a civil rights advocate at the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, and served as a law clerk for Justice Stephen Breyer at the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge William Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals, and U.S. District Court Judge Louis Pollak. She is a graduate of Harvard College and the Yale Law School and has a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge.
Before Healey resigned as attorney general to be inaugurated as governor last January, she appointed Dewar as first assistant attorney general. That move put Dewar in position to serve as acting attorney general between Healey’s Jan. 5 resignation and Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s Jan. 18 inauguration.
When Dewar is seated at the SJC, it will be the first time since December 2020 that the high court will include any justice not nominated by Gov. Charlie Baker. The Swampscott Republican filled all seven seats on the SJC during his two terms in office.
And while Dewar will be Healey’s first imprint on the SJC, she will not be the Arlington Democrat’s last. Justice David Lowy plans to resign from the SJC on Feb. 3 for a job at the University of Massachusetts, creating a vacancy for which Healey has not yet made a nomination.
From nomination to confirmation, Dewar’s process took just more than one month but the holidays fell right in the middle of that timeline.
The Supreme Judicial Court Nominating Commission is processing potential nominees to replace Lowy and “continues to work diligently to fill the second vacancy,” a Healey spokesperson said Wednesday.
Early departures could open up additional SJC seats, but the next assured vacancy will not arrive until Justice Scott Kafker turns 70 in April 2029, more than five years and a gubernatorial election from now.
Councilors dug into legal topics with Dewar at her confirmation hearing, but others chose to highlight the personal side of the nominee. Healey said she was certain that Dewar would be “a tremendous asset” to the SJC.
“It would be easy to underestimate this nominee. Bessie Dewar is a lovely person. She is caring, kind, empathetic, demonstrates tremendous compassion. She’s a loving mother to her children and a devoted wife to her husband. She could accurately be described as soft-spoken, engaging, welcoming and polite. She has a youthful and contagious energy. She’s excellent at building consensus,” the governor said. “I don’t think I would be exaggerating if I said that everyone she has ever worked with absolutely respects her and loves her.”
Justin Steele, who met Dewar 25 years ago when they both volunteered during college to teach during the evenings at the Suffolk County House of Correction, said he is “amazed at how Bessie is able to simultaneously work so hard at her job and still make so much time for her family, her friends, and for community engagement.”
“Bessie inspired my kids to join her for neighborhood running events, Bessie’s out in front of Back Bay Station selling Girl Scout cookies with her daughters, and Bessie is active in her daughter’s school,” he said. “Bessie is deeply aware of the tremendous responsibility of her role, representing the residents of the commonwealth as solicitor general. But I cannot think of anyone who could approach that role with as much humility as Bessie does. She is just so down to Earth.”
Steele said his wife got a text message from a friend when Dewar’s nomination was in the newspaper saying, “I almost didn’t recognize her. I’ve only met her wearing overalls and with her bike.”
The nominee shared some of her personal self with the council, too. She said that she met her husband “at a dance-off” and talked about how much she values the dead end street where she and her family live in Jamaica Plain, “where people of all different ages and backgrounds come together on our little circle to talk and play and celebrate each other’s holidays and support each other.”
[Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to correct Justice David Lowy’s name.]
