{"id":145087,"date":"2019-01-21T08:28:48","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T13:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=145087"},"modified":"2021-06-28T10:17:36","modified_gmt":"2021-06-28T14:17:36","slug":"richard-robinson-79-state-supreme-court-chief-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2019\/01\/richard-robinson-79-state-supreme-court-chief-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Robinson \u201979, State Supreme Court Chief Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"
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UConn alumnus Richard A. Robinson, the first African-American Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, will be the keynote speaker at the 2019 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Living Legacy Convocation on Thursday, Jan. 24, at 3:30 p.m. at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts. The event is free and open to the public.<\/em><\/p>\n

Learn more about Robinson from this profile that was first published in UConn Magazine’s fall 2018 edition<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Hail to the Chief: Richard Robinson \u201979, State Supreme Court Chief Justice<\/h3>\n

\u201cI was having dinner at home in the family room, watching television. My phone rings \u2013 a Stamford number that I didn\u2019t recognize. I didn\u2019t want to answer it, because I thought it was one of those robo\u00adcalls,\u201d says\u00a0Richard Robinson \u201979 (CLAS). \u201cBut my wife said to answer it.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other end of the line was Gov. Dannell Malloy, saying that he would nominate Robinson to become Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court.\u00a0\u201cI kissed my wife and asked, \u2018Did you find that different …?\u2019\u00a0She said, \u2018Why?\u2019\u00a0I said, \u2018I thought you might find it different \u2013 kissing a Supreme Court Chief Justice!\u2019\u201d\u00a0Her reaction, he says with a laugh, \u201cwas loud.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Liberal Arts<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Such an accomplished legal career didn\u2019t seem likely when Robinson first entered UConn in 1975. For one thing, he was an English major.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fell in love with Middle English and\u00a0The Canterbury Tales,<\/em>\u201d he says. \u201cI can still recite the intro.\u201d Asked to prove it, he rattles off the first eight lines: \u201cWhan that Aprille with his shoures soote \/ The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Robinson, 60, spent his first three years at UConn Stamford so he could commute. He worked several part-time jobs to help pay for school, including driving the intra-campus bus. He transferred to Storrs his senior year, desiring \u201cthat true college experience,\u201d and lived in the tight-knit, 50-person Jefferson Hall one semester.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt Jefferson, we did a fundraiser for a charitable cause. We had this one bike going for a week, which we all had to ride for an hour at a time. The bike would go continuously around the campus,\u201d Robinson recalls. \u201cI seem to remember being assigned the 2 to 3 a.m. shift a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Sliding Doors<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Graduating with a major in English and minor in ecology, Robinson told his mentor Ben Magubane, an anthropology professor who had been exiled from his own home country of South Africa, that he was considering law school. \u201cThat\u2019s a waste of time. Go into medicine,\u201d Magubane replied.<\/p>\n

After much thought, Robinson decided on law school and graduated from the University of West Virginia in 1984. He roots for UConn sports to this day, though admits to feeling conflicted during the seasons when the two teams competed in the same Big East conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter those games,\u201d Robinson explains, \u201cI would say I had rooted for whichever team won.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Aisle Crossings<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Working for 16 years as legal counsel for the city of Stamford and the Connecticut chapter of the NAACP, Robinson gained a reputation as a rare bipartisan figure in the state.<\/p>\n

He was nominated for his first two lower court judgeships by two Republican governors, John Rowland and Jodi Rell, and then was nominated to the Supreme Court and later appointed Chief Justice by a Democratic governor. The politically divided Senate and House both confirmed his nomination unanimously.<\/p>\n

Which ruling does he consider his most important during his court tenure?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always the last case that went out,\u201d he says. \u201cMy view is this: No one case is more important than the other. For every litigant, that\u2019s the most important case to them. That\u2019s how a justice should think about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I tend not to watch the press coverage of cases when they\u2019re issued,\u201d Robinson continues, \u201cbecause I don\u2019t feel that\u2019s the important part of it. It\u2019s how it impacts the law, the jurisprudence, how it impacts the people who were involved in it. I don\u2019t look at whether it\u2019s popular or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 4th-degree black belt in karate, Robinson says he even practices with the UConn Karate Club from time to time, and laments that the group didn\u2019t exist when he attended. His wife Nancy, however, is a 6th-degree black belt. \u201cI have sparred with my wife a couple times, and she beat me every single time,\u201d Robinson admits. \u201cShe\u2019s too fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robinson says he hopes to lead the Connecticut Supreme Court for the next decade, until the state-mandated retirement for all judges at age 70.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was 20, I probably thought that rule made a lot of sense,\u201d Robinson says. \u201cNow that I\u2019m actually nearing 70, I don\u2019t think it makes much sense at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The first African-American Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court will be keynote speaker at the 2019 Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation on Jan. 24. Read his profile in UConn Magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":144695,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,2226,1857,174,2225,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2027],"class_list":["post-145087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-clas","category-law","category-uconn-stamford","category-uconn-storrs","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 14:55:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145087"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145322,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145087\/revisions\/145322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/144695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145087"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=145087"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=145087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}