Thrown Into the Deep End
by Judge Gregory K. Orme
Although the Administrative Office of the Courts had designed an education and orientation program for us so we’d have some sense of what we were supposed to be doing before we started hearing cases, it didn’t really work in my case. I was the Court of Appeals representative on the Judicial Council. Soon after I was sworn in, the Council was scheduled to meet in St. George – maybe in conjunction with the mid-year meeting of the Bar – and the Supreme Court was scheduled to hear cases down there, too. Chief Justice Hall called me at home and asked if I could fill in for Justice Stewart, who wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be making the trip. I had been sworn in, but hadn’t read a single brief or heard a single argument as an appellate judge. Our robes hadn’t arrived yet, so I was invited to borrow the Supreme Court’s “loaner,” which proved to be former Justice Henriod’s robe. I accepted the invitation. This promised to be excellent on-the-job training! And it was.
A couple of days after returning to Salt Lake, the Chief called and told me Justice Stewart was quite ill, and he asked if I could just take Dan’s place for the rest of that month’s calendar, including taking his share of the writing responsibility. I jumped at the chance, of course, and so heard arguments in fifteen Supreme Court cases, and drew the responsibility to write three Supreme Court opinions, before I’d ever cracked my first brief at the Court of Appeals.