Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

White takes nothing for granted on the bench

By: Jack Zemlicka, [email protected]//August 26, 2011//

White takes nothing for granted on the bench

By: Jack Zemlicka, [email protected]//August 26, 2011//

Listen to this article
Judge Maxine White

Growing up in rural Mississippi during the peak of civil unrest didn’t make for an easy childhood for Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Maxine White.

The daughter of sharecroppers, White, along with her 10 siblings, dealt with poverty, discrimination, and a lack of educational and employment opportunities.

Her home, which her family still maintains in Enola, Miss., was the first on the side of the train tracks that separated the black side of town from the white.

That existence for the first 15 years of her life gave White, 60, an appreciation, she said, for the best of what life has to offer, including her 1992 appointment to the bench.

Since then, she has carved out a reputation as a thoughtful but efficient judge also known for having one of the more radiant smiles in the courthouse.

As White puts it, she has no reason not to smile, having built a respected legal career in the face of adversity.

She stepped away from her civil calendar to reminisce about the good times and bad in this week’s Asked & Answered.

Wisconsin Law Journal: If you could develop one CLE course for credit, what would it be about?    Maxine White: Trial preparation

WLJ: What was your least favorite course in law school and why?
White: Property, because the course was made more difficult by the heavy reliance on ancient terminology, some dating back to the feudal times such as, fee simple, accession, defeasible estate and nonpossessory interest, to convey legal principles.

WLJ: What do you consider your biggest achievement to date and why?
White: I think my greatest achievement was surviving severe poverty, discrimination and really just a daily grind of the world around me that told me I was not worthy of the American dream. Surviving that, understanding it, explaining it, sharing it and, despite that, arriving at this point in my life where I’m happy.

WLJ: What is the one luxury item you cannot live without?
White: Good coffee

WLJ: What is one thing attorneys should know that they won’t learn in law school?
White: How to draft pleadings

WLJ: What is the first concert you went to?
White: I grew up listening to B.B. King and his band rehearse a block from my home. But my first real concert was James Brown while attending Alcorn State University in Lorman, Miss.

WLJ: If you could trade places with someone for a day, who would it be and why?
White: A fighter pilot. The job offers personal challenges, excitement and unmatched rewards.

WLJ: What is your motto?
White: ‘To thine own self be true,’ from Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

WLJ: What is your favorite movie about lawyers or the law and why?
White: ‘The Road to Brown,’ a documentary film that tells the story of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling and the culmination of cases against segregation that launched the Civil Rights movement. It is also an inspiring tribute to the visionary black lawyer, Charles Hamilton Houston.

WLJ: If you hadn’t become a lawyer, what career would you have chosen?
White: Clinical psychology or medicine

Polls

Should Steven Avery be granted a new evidentiary hearing?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Legal News

See All Legal News

WLJ People

Sea all WLJ People

Opinion Digests