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Listen to this articleGov. Maura T. Healey’s first nominee to the Supreme Judicial Court was unanimously confirmed to the bench on Jan. 10.
There was little doubt that the Governor’s Council would confirm Elizabeth N. “Bessie” Dewar, the state solicitor whom Healey tabbed to fill the SJC seat that Justice Elspeth B. Cypher has now vacated upon stepping down on Jan. 12 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 on Jan. 10 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. “I was never so impressed with anyone as she is. And she has compassion. That’s what I’m looking for.”
Healey’s office said earlier on Jan. 10 that the governor would schedule Dewar’s swearing-in “for a future date” if the Governor’s Council confirmed her.
Once she is sworn in, Dewar will be the first justice since Robert J. Cordy to sit on the SJC without 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 is 43 years old and will not reach the state’s mandatory judicial retirement age of 70 until July 4, 2050.
Just as Cordy had a working relationship with Weld and Cellucci, Dewar and Healey have professional ties.
As attorney general, Healey in 2016 named Dewar as the commonwealth’s second state solicitor. In that role, Dewar supervised the briefing and arguing of appeals by attorneys throughout the AG’s Office, advised the AG on exercising her authority to decide whether to appeal from adverse decisions, and led the office’s amicus brief practice in state and federal courts.
Dewar had worked as an appellate and trial-level lawyer at Ropes & Gray, had been a civil rights advocate at the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, and had been a law clerk for Justice Stephen Breyer at the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge William Fletcher of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the late U.S. District Court Judge Louis H. Pollak in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She is a graduate of Yale Law School.
Before Healey resigned as AG to be inaugurated as governor last January, she appointed Dewar as first assistant AG. That move put Dewar in position to be acting AG between Healey’s Jan. 5 resignation and AG Andrea J. Campbell’s Jan. 18 inauguration.
When Dewar is seated at the SJC, it will be the first time since December 2020 that the 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.
Healey has another opportunity to fill a seat on the court with Justice David A. Lowy’s February retirement.
