Feuding Justice Fires a Parting Shot

Chief Justice John Mowbray spent his last few hours in office on Thursday packing boxes with his wife and holding an impromptu news conference to take one last shot at some of his colleagues.

“I will not be a justice after a few hours,” he said, adding that he had not been asked to return as a senior justice.

Mowbray has engaged in a running feud with three fellow justices for more than a year. As a final insult, he said the three, Thomas Steffen, Charles Springer and Bob Rose refused to attend the last Supreme Court conference Mowbray would attend.

The three claimed Mowbray inserted language critical of Steffen into two court opinions without their knowledge.

In one that reversed a lower court decision, he urged Steffen to open his eyes “to the practical consequences of your rarefied legal analysis.”

“I suggest to you that the judicial task requires far more than sterile analytic skill,” he wrote. “One needs compassion, humility, grace, and at times mercy and the ability to forgive.”

As a result of the chief justice’s “deceiving the court in this manner,” the justices refused to attend the conference on pending cases, according to a statement issued by the court clerk.

Mowbray said the justices had every opportunity to read his opinion before it was filed.

“This is, I think, serious,” Mowbray said. “These were important cases, many of which I authored. Now, they will have to be done over. I won’t be here.”

He said the court also could issue opinions signed by four justices instead of all five.

Mowbray’s 26 years on the Supreme Court officially ends at midnight today. He said incoming Justice Miriam Shearing had wanted him to swear her in on Monday, but he would be unable to since he has not been offered senior status.