“Will I have the courage to risk a break in course from time to time, if need be, to enter some new, challenging place?” The question was posed last spring by Judge Kevin Ross in his commencement address to graduates of his alma mater, the University of Iowa College of Law. He challenged the new lawyers to never stop questioning themselves on the big issues of integrity, civility, and purpose, and to keep tabs on both “the lawyer I am” and “the lawyer I should be.” It is clear how Ross himself would respond to the question, having braved several course changes in his own career.
Most recently, Ross’s challenges have centered on the learning curve of a new judge. Sworn in as a judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals on Feb. 23, 2006, he is approaching the end of his first year on the bench. “I had no designs to be a judge. I was happy with my practice, thrilled with my clients,” he said. Ross practiced for almost nine years with the Minneapolis firm of Greene Espel, specializing in the areas of governmental disputes, constitutional challenges, and employment law. Despite his satisfaction with his practice, something motivated him to seek a change.
“I had the wonderful experience of having as mentors Judge Magnuson, whom I clerked for in the federal district court, Judge Lay, whom I clerked for at the Eighth Circuit, and Justice Simonett, who retired from the Minnesota Supreme Court and joined Greene Espel shortly before I did. I had a great wealth of judicial wisdom thrown in front of me,” Ross said. Consulting with those mentors, his former partner, Cliff Greene, and his wife of 21 years, Michon, Ross decided to apply for the appellate judgeship.
Ross’s transition from lawyer to judge is all-the-more interesting, however, because of his job before he was a lawyer: Ross spent five years as a police officer.
In his last year of undergraduate studies at the University of Iowa, close to graduating with a major in broadcast communications and a minor in English, Ross’s career underwent its first course change. Deciding that he had “absolutely no desire whatsoever to tell other people’s stories,” Ross decided to forgo a career in broadcasting and he instead joined the Iowa City Police Department. He saw law enforcement as a life-expanding opportunity and wanted to broaden his perspective.
Ross worked for his first four years as a patrol officer, spending the bulk of his time on the night shift. He recalled his work as “a series of extraordinary experiences,” some traumatic, some sad, and some rewarding. As an example, Ross recalled a woman with whom the police had frequent contact by reason of her association with her boyfriend, a violent criminal. One night, Ross and other officers were called to an apartment and found the woman with visible wounds from what appeared to be recent abuse. While other officers transported the boyfriend to jail (after finding a fully automatic weapon hidden in the apartment), Ross took the opportunity to deliver a wake-up call to the woman regarding her life choices and her future.
Some time later, Ross was called in to his supervisor’s office and told of a call just received from this woman’s parents. They explained that they had been unable to get through to their daughter and had resigned themselves to the expectation that they would one day get a phone call from the authorities saying that she was dead. Instead, she had successfully completed rehab, gone back to school, and turned her entire life around. Her parents wanted the supervisor to know that the woman said that she owes the radical change to something Officer Ross said to her that night. Ross cannot recall what he actually said, and he doesn’t claim any credit for the turnaround. But the incident is one of the many that makes him appreciate how his years on the force helped shape his perspective.
Ross recounted that he appreciated the discretion to decide when to act and when to teach as it relates to enforcing the law. “You don’t always make arrests. Sometimes, you just give a hopeful lecture to a bunch of kids you’ve caught doing things that are unwise.”
Ross took to heart the police motto of “to protect and serve,” saying that he found it the best way to sum up what law enforcement officers are expected to do every day. Whether taking a violent person off the street or resolving a neighborhood squabble, Ross found it significant that he could be part of the solution.
When Iowa City started a crime prevention program, Ross was called upon by the chief of police to lead the effort. He coordinated a mass roll-out of neighborhood watch programs, home security surveys, and a program designed to teach children lessons about safety and avoiding crime. He found the work rewarding, but said that it required far more patience than patrol work because the result of his work, the lack of crime, was far less obvious and immediate than that of a patrol officer. “When you go home at night after resolving a conflict or putting a criminal behind bars, you can’t help feel something of significance, that you made a difference,” Ross recalled. With crime prevention, though, “you can make only educated guesses about whether conditions are better because of your efforts.”
After working on the front line of the justice system, Ross changed course again and decided to go to law school. He graduated in 1994 and then spent three years in judicial clerkships—two with Judge Paul Magnuson in federal district court, and one with Judge Donald Lay on the Eighth Circuit. Given his background and interests, it is not surprising that his work at Greene Espel included some police liability claims, but Ross made a conscious decision not to limit himself to those types of cases, preferring a much broader practice.
Asked how his background as a police officer impacts his view from the bench, Ross said that “it adds a different perspective, not necessarily a better perspective.” He explained, “We expect all our judges to be intelligent, to be educated, and to possess good judgment and common sense, and certainly I hope I meet that standard. But what really enriches the court, I think, is the unique perspective that each one brings to the position.” He hopes that, as part of a larger court, his experience as a police officer adds to the mix of viewpoints from which cases are considered.
One year as a judge has convinced Ross that most Minnesota appellate lawyers appreciate their important role of educating the court concerning the particular law and facts that should control the outcome. But he noted that a few lawyers—by far the minority—mistakenly rely on the court to “fill in the gaps.” He ssaid: “There is an old adage that bad facts make bad law. I don’t know if that’s the case. But I think good lawyering is more likely to make good law and less-effective lawyering is more likely to result in what we call ‘bad law.’” He appreciates now just what it means that judges are generalists; they have a lot of work to do drafting opinions on all subjects, reviewing opinions drafted by other chambers, preparing for and attending oral arguments, and completing the other tasks that fall to them. If the parties do not effectively educate the court, they have lost the best opportunity to keep the analysis, and the outcome, on track toward “good law.”
Ross takes his commitment to advancing the cause of justice seriously. At his swearing-in ceremony, he was presented with a gift from his former boss, Judge Magnuson: a copy of Judge Edward Devitt’s article, “Ten Commandments for the New Judge.”1 Ross appreciates the sentiment expressed by the article and, particularly, its first rule: Be Kind. In the words of Judge Devitt, “If we judges could possess but one attribute, it should be a kind and understanding heart.”
It was that sentence from Judge Devitt’s “Ten Commandments” that Judge Ross chose to quote, in fact, when he wrote a letter to a federal judge in another state, kindly questioning that judge’s decision to issue an opinion that publicly and harshly excoriated an attorney for making an unimpressive argument. The federal opinion had become immediately legendary on the Internet, seen by many as humorous. Ross appreciated the humor, but worried that the impatient tone from the court might unintentionally contribute to a growing, larger issue: incivility in the legal profession. Ross received a long, friendly response from the federal judge, who was then persuaded that his decision had indeed struck too bitter a tone.
On the larger issue of the cumulative effects of the practice of law, Judge Ross cautioned the graduates he addressed last spring:
The highly competitive practice of law has a way of shaping a person. If you let it, it can and it will make you into a “thing;” the practice can form you into that caricature that persons of ordinary sensibilities tend to resent. That thing the practice of law would make of you is ultimately what becomes of the once passionate, once idealistic, once hopeful, would-be world changer, who has become eroded by the routine, battering current of the practice, and who has failed to cultivate the ground cover that resists that erosion of soul…. If you let it fool you, this constant competition naturally will shape you into the sort of contentious self-absorbed lawyer joke you never wanted to become.
Ross sees the choice for new attorneys as clear: either shape your practice to fit your goals and values or let it shape you. Winning that battle is a constant challenge for attorneys, who are competitive by nature, but Ross thinks that deliberately avoiding contentiousness and incivility is critical to long-term career satisfaction and success.
Ross has found life on the court to be rewarding and counts “the wonderful, unexpected collegiality of the members of the court and the immediate opportunity to develop professional friendships with judges and court staff” as the biggest surprise of his first year on the bench. Based on his clerkship experience, Ross was concerned that life as an appellate judge might be isolating. To the contrary, he has thoroughly enjoyed his experience and, at the same time, has been impressed by the unshakable commitment by all the court’s members to do what is right by the rule of law.
Judge Ross and his wife live in Minnetonka and have five children—four daughters who range in age from 15 to 20 years old, and a 5-year-old son. Ross has vivid memories of their four young daughters literally crawling all over him as he tried to read his casebooks in law school while still spending time with them. Ross laughed about having to resort to offering one dollar to each as a payoff for their silence so he could put in some last-hour review as his wife drove him to the bar exam. He claims they all met their end of the bargain and were fully paid, and insists that it’s the only sort of bribery he would ever tolerate.
1 Edward J. Devitt, Ten Commandments for the New Judge, 47 A.B.A. J. 1175 (1961); revised at Edward J. Devitt, Ten Commandments for the New Judge, 65 A.B.A. J. 574 (1979).
