For the first time in Alaska history, the state’s supreme court is majority female. It’s also being led, for just the second time, by a woman.
Susan Carney, Alaska’s new chief justice, is one month into her three-year term.
Carney has served on the Supreme Court since 2016, when she was appointed by Gov. Bill Walker. She sat down for an interview with the Alaska Beacon on Tuesday, ahead of the annual State of the Judiciary address to the Legislature, in Juneau.
“I think it’s great,” she said of the majority-female court. “I think it’s important that any court reflects the community that it serves.”
Today, more than half, or 56% of law school students are women. Greater numbers of women are pursuing legal careers, and now roughly half of federal government, law firm associates and full-time law school faculty are women, according to the American Bar Association.
She said she’s seen the growth of opportunities for women first-hand, from her youth playing sports to law school and throughout her legal career. “It’s a good sign for the evolution of practice, evolution of what we do,” she said. “And I think it’s great for kids to see, you know, for Alaskans to think, ‘I could do that.’ The same with the Legislature, right? The House of Representatives is majority women; ‘I could do that.’”
Carney has practiced law for nearly 40 years in Alaska. After graduating from Harvard Law School, she clerked for the Alaska Supreme Court, then worked as a public defender and then with the Alaska Office of Public Advocacy for almost 30 years, focused on criminal law. The office works on issues of child guardianship and advocacy, as well as elder assistance.
“I did hundreds of trials,” she said, many in rural Alaska that allowed her to develop an understanding of rural communities and dynamics. “I spent a lot of time in Interior villages, North Slope villages, so I just know what it’s like to be in a small community,” she said. “Anchorage might as well be Manhattan.”
As a judge, she said that experience has allowed her to work more efficiently. “So when I’m looking at a (court) transcript, I can see pretty clearly what was going on. I’m not just reading the dry script in English class, you know, I can see the the action is going on, and I think that helps me to orient myself.”
She said each justice brings their unique experience, which benefits the court.
“Like a basketball team with five players, everybody’s got different strengths and weaknesses, right? The point guard on a basketball team is not the person you want in rebounding or doing the jump ball at the start, generally. So the same way that team works together, we do too, with people bringing in their different perspectives.”
When hearing oral arguments in court, some justices stay silent. Carney is known for frequently asking questions of the attorneys presenting a case. That’s by design, she said. “Because courts are scary. Regular people come to court, and they are scared from the moment they come in generally,” she said. “So I think it’s important to try to tone that down, but it’s also important to let them know that I’m listening, and I know why they’re here.”
After the courtroom arguments are over, the justices gather in a conference room to discuss the issue. Generally, one justice leads the discussion on a given case.
“That person will say, here’s what I think we should do. If anybody disagrees, that person will state their disagreement. Those two may go back and forth discussing it. When that discussion is done, then from newest person to most senior, we go around the table and people put out their position,” she said.
“Sometimes there are strongly held disagreements, but we can resolve them in a way that don’t do violence to the law and principles,” Carney said.
“We try to avoid making sweeping constitutional proclamations if we can,” she said.
The Beacon asked Carney about extreme court backlogs, recently highlighted in an Anchorage Daily News-ProPublica investigation that found that the time needed to try Alaska’s most serious felony cases has nearly tripled in the past decade. “I’m not going to try and justify cases dragging out for seven years or 10 years,” she said. “But those cases are real outliers.”
She said typical times are much shorter. “Misdemeanor cases, by and large, they’re all taken care of within six months. And the lowest level felonies are about the same. The most serious cases, which I think both of those were murders, or really high-level sexual assaults,” she said of the cases focused on in the investigation, “those are classified felonies, and the median time to resolve those is three years. So it’s still substantial, but it’s not outrageous.”
Asked about the fact that more than half of Alaska’s prison inmates are jailed because they’re awaiting trial, Carney said she wasn’t familiar with that information. That was reported by the ProPublica investigation and by the Alaska Criminal Justice Data Analysis Commission.
She said the court system is taking steps to address the time it takes to resolve cases, like limiting the number of continuances, or delays, in court proceedings. “One of the things that I believe at this point, all of the presiding judges in the four judicial districts have done is issue orders that say, ‘You can’t get more than this number of continuances,’ and ‘This kind of case cannot be continued more than this amount of time, no matter what, unless there’s something really extraordinary,’” she said.
Carney said improvements in technology, online access and virtual hearings put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic have also helped streamline court proceedings, and overall access to the courts.
When asked about public trust in Alaska courts, Carney emphasized the importance of access and courts serving their communities, “to look like the community that we’re serving, to be supported by people from all parts of the community, whether it’s our law clerks, whether it’s the people at the front counter when you come to court to pay your fine or get your marriage license,” she said.
At the same time, the judicial system aims to be fair and apolitical. “We do have ethical obligations not to be influenced by things outside the evidence,” she said. “But we also need to participate in our communities and let people know. You know that we are people too, and we are soccer coaches and we are parents in the PTA, and we belong to the church and we belong to this organization too.”
She pointed to the Alaska Judicial Council, and its system of rating legal competence and judgment as essential to holding judges and justices accountable.
“We’re certainly aware of the broader world, but we can’t be influenced by politics or emotions or liking or disliking parties. We just apply the Alaska law to the facts that are presented,” she said.
In Alaska, the chief justice serves on a rotating basis: Every three years, the court’s five members vote to pick a chief justice to serve as the court system’s top administrative officer and the head of the high court.
When Gov. Mike Dunleavy appointed Aimee Oravec to the court in December, it ended a wave of retirements among the five justices. Four of the court’s five members have been appointed since 2020 — Carney has the most seniority on the court, and is set to serve as chief justice through 2027.
• This article originally appeared online at alaskabeacon.com. Alaska Beacon, an affiliate of States Newsroom, is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government.
