May 14, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 80 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session
All in Senate sectionPrev28 of 68Next
TRIBUTE TO MARILYN SKOGLUND; Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 80
(Senate - May 14, 2019)
Text available as:
Formatting necessary for an accurate reading of this text may be shown by tags (e.g., <DELETED> or <BOLD>) or may be missing from this TXT display. For complete and accurate display of this text, see the PDF.
[Pages S2806-S2807] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] TRIBUTE TO MARILYN SKOGLUND Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to a remarkable and unique person, Vermont Supreme Court Justice Marilyn Skoglund, who will soon be retiring after serving 25 years with the Vermont judiciary. Justice Skoglund is what we all want to see in a jurist and public servant. She is dedicated, personable, and highly committed to the rule of law, but her path to the Vermont Supreme Court was anything but typical. As a single mother working hard to get by in the 1970s, law school was not an option. Instead, she took advantage of Vermont's ``Reading the Law'' approach that allowed her to study while serving as an apprentice of sorts with the Vermont Attorney General's office. After being admitted to the Vermont Bar, she would go on to serve as chief of the civil law and public protection divisions in the AG's office before being appointed to the bench in 1994 by then-Governor Howard Dean. She would be elevated to the supreme court just 3 years later. At the time, she was only the second woman to serve on Vermont's highest court. Today, women make up the majority of its five justices. I have had the pleasure of knowing Justice Skoglund during her many years of living and working in my hometown of Montpelier. Her personal story was so compelling that she was my first choice in 2008 to keynote Vermont's Women's Economic Opportunity Conference, an annual event I have now hosted for 23 years. But no tribute to Justice Skoglund would be complete if it did not mention her keen sense of humor. Perhaps it is this trait that has so deftly served her these many years, for as serious as the supreme court must be in delivering justice, Marilyn Skoglund has demonstrated time and again the benefit of [[Page S2807]] laughter in our lives. She finds the time to appreciate what some might only see as mundane; she cherishes her friendships, and she mentors those who will succeed us. By her own account, she has led a full life. I ask unanimous consent that these excerpts of the May 1 Seven Days profile of Justice Skoglund be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: [From Seven Days, May 1, 2019] Justice Served: Marilyn Skoglund to Retire From the Vermont Supreme Court (By Paul Heintz) On her way out the door of her Montpelier home last Friday, Vermont Supreme Court Justice Marilyn Skoglund rolled up her right sleeve to show off her latest tattoo. ``I waited until my youngest daughter's wedding,'' the justice said with a sneaky smile. ``I knew she wouldn't want me to get it.'' Written in a simple black cursive on the inside of her arm were the words, ``Jag ar matt,'' a Swedish expression often uttered in her childhood home at the conclusion of a family meal. ``I am satisfied,'' she translated. ``I am full.'' The 72-year-old jurist reflected for a moment--perhaps on a life rich in family, friends, dogs and the law--and declared, ``I am satisfied! I mean, what else can you say? I'm very lucky. I am satisfied.'' This week, Skoglund plans to inform Gov. Phil Scott that, after 22 years on the state's highest court, she intends to resign effective September 1. Skoglund's retirement brings to a close one of the most remarkable and least likely careers in the Vermont judiciary--that of a struggling single mother who passed the bar without a day of law school and worked her way up to become the second female justice in state history. Now, the famously irreverent attorney is looking for a new challenge, be it the beginning Spanish class she plans to take this fall or the online bartender course she's long contemplated. ``I just need to take a chance and see what else I can do before I drop dead,'' she said, letting loose her trademark cackle. Skoglund's sense of humor has long served as the ``collegiality glue'' on the court of five, according to retired justice John Dooley. In her decades on the bench, she has made it her mission to draw colleagues and staff members out of their casework and into the world--through court poetry slams, end-of-term parties and art openings at the Supreme Court gallery she founded and oversees. ``I would describe her as a unifier,'' said Victoria Westgate, a Burlington attorney who clerked with her from 2013 to 2014. The justice has also served as a role model to a generation of young women in the law, Westgate said. Though Skoglund may be best known for her larger-than-life personality, colleagues describe her as a deeply serious jurist with an unmatched work ethic. ``Of all the justices I've worked with, I think she probably put . . . more effort into preparing and understanding a case than any,'' said Dooley, who served alongside Skoglund for two of his three decades on the court . . . Born in Chicago and raised in St. Louis, Skoglund had what she describes as an ``idyllic childhood,'' replete with a picket fence and parents who were ``the Swedish equivalent of Ozzie and Harriet.'' Her father managed a steel treatment plant and her mother, a former hairdresser and math tutor, raised the future justice and her sister. Skoglund spent seven years meandering her way through Southern Illinois University--a fine arts major and ``hippie folk singer'' who worked, for a time, as a graphic designer for the inventor and futurist Buckminster Fuller. She finally earned her diploma after getting married and becoming pregnant with her first daughter. The young family moved to Vermont in 1973 so that Skoglund's husband could take a job teaching painting and printmaking at Goddard College. They rented a small, uninsulated cottage on a 500-acre dairy farm in Plainfield. Skoglund learned to milk cows, taught photography and worked as an editor at Goddard. The marriage didn't last, though, and soon she was raising her daughter on her own. Skoglund found herself relying upon the generosity of Walter Smith, the 68-year-old dairy farmer who served as her landlord and her ``very own personal version of welfare.'' He provided firewood when she needed it and let her dip raw milk from the bulk tank. When she and her daughter were low on food, they would join Smith for cans of chicken noodle soup and mayonnaise sandwiches. ``He saw me through it,'' she said. Skoglund's experience with poverty later informed her work on the bench and, she said, gave her ``a very good understanding of desperation and frustration and what it causes people to do.'' ``I think I'm the only justice that's ever been poor,'' she said. After completing a six-month paralegal class, Skoglund landed a clerkship in the Vermont Attorney General's Office and began reading for the law--an alternative route to the bar that enables aspiring attorneys to bypass law school through independent study. It was a solitary, self-motivated education, but I am disciplined,'' she wrote in a recent essay about her unconventional path. ``In the central office of the attorney general, I was the only student with about 50 `teachers.' '' Skoglund spent four years clerking for Louis Peck, then the chief assistant attorney general and later a Supreme Court justice. She would run lines for Peck, an amateur actor, and he would school her in the law. Skoglund credits him with informing her ``legally conservative'' approach. ``I don't take liberties with the language, and I don't read myself into it,'' she said. ``It's not about you, Marilyn.'' Skoglund spent 17 years in the Attorney General's Office, eventually serving as chief of its civil law division and then its public protection division. She was appointed to the Superior Court in 1994 and to the Supreme Court in 1997. ``It's like candy,'' Skoglund said of her current gig. ``I have never been bored.'' The pace of the job wouldn't allow it. The supremes hear an average of 120 full cases a year, plus many more appeals on the so-called ``rocket docket.'' They're also consumed by the myriad unseen administrative duties of the judicial branch, such as divvying up its ``shoestring'' budget and managing the lower courts. ``This all takes hours when all I want to be doing is reading cases,'' Skoglund said. . . . According to Skoglund, her acid prose occasionally gives her law clerks ``panic attacks.'' But members of her tight fraternity of former clerks praise her ``dedication to raising a new generation'' of lawyers, as Todd Daloz put it. ``She has a real energy and a real humor and a real joy of life,'' said Daloz, who clerked for Skoglund from 2009 to 2011 and now serves as associate general counsel for the Vermont State Colleges System. ``When I hire [clerks], I explain that I'm hiring my best friend for the next year,'' Skoglund said. ``I have to be able to come in and vent and bitch and moan and get solace from them.''. . . For the past 35 years, Skoglund has lived in a tall, brown- and green-shingled house perched above the Statehouse on the southern boundary of Hubbard Park. The place is crammed with books and artwork and features a ``wall of dogs'' consisting of canine paintings she's collected. ``It's kind of a magical place for me,'' she said of her home, where she does much of her off-the bench legal work. ``It's just a sanctuary.'' Skoglund's two grown daughters, an obstetrician and a neuropsychologist, have long since moved out. Her current roommates include a 4-year-old goldendoodle named Johnny and, during Vermont's four-month legislative session, Senate Majority Leader Becca Balint (D-Windham). ``I always say I have the best roommate,'' Balint said. ``Sometimes it's seven o'clock in the morning and we're both crying because we're laughing so hard.'' . . . Last Friday morning, after showing off her tattoo, Skoglund wrapped an unused dog leash around her waist and commenced her three-block commute down the hill and past the Statehouse to the Supreme Court. Johnny pranced along in front of her, relishing his freedom. Skoglund gushed about her daughters and 9-year-old granddaughter, with whom she had spent the previous weekend. ``They're not thrilled with this tattoo--at least, the younger one isn't,'' she conceded. ``But that's the way it goes, ladies. Mom's gotta do what Mom's gotta do.'' Skoglund entered the court through a side door and showed off one of her most concrete contributions to the institution: an art gallery in the lobby of the building that she's curated for the past 20 years. ``When I first got here, it was the hall of dead justices,'' she said, referring to the oil paintings of her predecessors, now relegated to the stairways and upper floors. In their place was a series of mixed-media pieces by the artist Janet Van Fleet consisting of red buttons and plastic animals. Johnny led Skoglund up to her third-floor office, which features a smiling boar's head mounted to a wall. ``Behind you is Emmet, my amanuensis,'' she said, gesturing at the hairy creature. ``A lot of those wild boar things look scary and vicious. He's just sweet.'' Skoglund took a seat behind her cluttered desk and said, with a resigned tone of voice, ``I've been here for 22 years. It's time to go.'' Asked how she hoped people would remember her, Skoglund answered without hesitation. ``I worked hard,'' she said. ``I took my position very seriously. I never cut corners. I understood the responsibility. That's what I hope.'' ____________________
All in Senate sectionPrev28 of 68Next