Newly-retired Chief Justice Bernette J. Johnson offers reflections on her career

11th January 2021   ·   0 Comments

By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Writer

Louisiana State Supreme Court Chief Justice Bernette Joshua Johnson left the highest state court bench and walked into the next phase of her life: retirement. Johnson was the Louisiana Supreme Court’s 25th chief justice, its second female chief justice, and its first African-American chief justice.

In an interview with The Louisiana Weekly, Johnson reflected on her career and her future.

“Let’s see. I’ve been officially retired for four days. I’m still trying to figure out what retirement is all about. I don’t have any long term plans. Coronavirus is a problem right now… but I still want to do some traveling, eventually,” she says.

Johnson’s youthful looks belie her more than seven decades. Her demeanor is of a staunch, no nonsense jurist, but those close to her know that she has a heart of gold. On the bench for 36 years, 26 of which were spent on the LSSC, as an associate justice then the boss of it all, in the Chief Justice position, Johnson didn’t hesitate to be the lone dissenter in cases she thought needed clarity for justice’s sake.

Born in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, Johnson grew up in New Orleans and attended segregated schools. Her teen years were spent in Pontchartrain Park, a middle-class Black neighborhood in Gentilly. “I caught the bus to go to Walter L. Cohen High School. I remember riding the bus with Gloria,” she relates. Gloria is the wife of civil and voting rights activist Carl Galmon.

Judging from her high school academic career, Johnson was extremely smart. She was the Valedictorian of her graduating class. She applied and was admitted with a full scholarship to Spelman College, the prestigious 139-year-old all-girl school in Atlanta, Ga.

A scan of the HBCU’s notable alumni brings photos of Bernette Joshua Johnson, Alice Walker, Stacey Abrams, Miriam Wright Edelman, Keisha Knight Pulliam, Bernice King, Ester Rolle, Christine King Farris, and Varnette Honeywood, to name a few.

With her bachelor’s degree in political science in hand, Johnson went to work for the NAACP-LDF, traveling all through the South, where LDF went to desegregate schools. Her job was to talk to parents and convince them to register their children in desegregated schools.

After the summer of ‘64, Johnson worked at foster care agencies in New York, but her mind kept going back to her time with the NAACP-LDF. “At Spelman I met with some lawyers and got the job at NAACP-LDF. The lawyers there were inspiring. I realized I could use the law to do something.”

Johnson decided to take the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) and attend the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University. “At the time, they hadn’t had a Black student for 10 years. At LSU, Johnson was one of only two Black women in the law school. Gammiel Poindexter Gray became a lifelong friend.

It’s fair to say that the LSU campus poised some challenges. “In 1965, David Duke was a student in undergrad school; the school was excluding students from dormitories and they were showing ‘The Birth of a Nation’ in the student center.”

“The Birth of a Nation” is a 1915 silent film by D.W. Griffith, originally called “The Clansman,” glorifies the KKK and displays horrible stereotypes of Black men (with white actors in blackface).

Nonetheless, her law school experience was a good one. Fellow students and professors were willing to help them. “Some of our classmates shared their class notes with us and Professor Ben Shieber was very generous and kind. We could always find someone who would help.”

Johnson kept in touch with her cultural roots. “I studied with students at Southern University.” One of the students she studied with was Etta K. Hearn, who also became a lifelong friend. Hearns is a lawyer in Baton Rouge.

After graduating, Johnson became a law clerk for Ernest “Dutch” Morial, an attorney and judge, who became New Orleans’ first Black mayor. “Dutch was my mentor,” Johnson explains. He had attended LSU law school 10 years before her. During the Morial administration, Johnson became a city attorney.

She also became the managing attorney of the New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation (NOLAC), where she provided legal services to clients in socio-economically deprived neighborhoods. She practiced in federal, state and juvenile courts, advancing the rights of children, the poor, the elderly and the disenfranchised. Johnson also worked with an educational foundation where she prepared students for law school.

In retrospect, Johnson achieved several history-making “firsts” during her career.

She was the first woman elected to serve on the Civil District Court of New Orleans. In 1994, her colleagues elected her chief judge. She was the first Black woman elected to serve on the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1994 and was re-elected without opposition in 2000 and 2010.

When it was Johnson’s turn to step up to the chief justice position, legal attempts were made to keep her out of the top spot. Johnson knew this was coming. It started two months after her election to the bench in 1994. Her fellow associate justices tried to let two other judges jump ahead of her. Johnson’s white peers claimed she didn’t have the proper tenure to ascend to the position.

A white attorney in private practice sued the state in 1995 in an attempt to invalidate a settlement ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court, which came to be known as the Chisom Consent Decree, to rectify a longstanding pattern of discrimination.

Prior to the Consent Decree, the Black vote in Orleans Parish was purposefully diluted. The First District was a multi-member district that consisted of judges elected from Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. The Consent Decree created a temporary eighth seat on the LSSC until the two white justices of the First District retired or ascended to the top position. Then the First District would be split in two and District 7 would be created solely for Orleans Parish voters.

The private attorney’s lawsuit failed, but in 2012, Johnson was informed that she had to give notice, along with the two fellow justices, that she was in contention for a position that was rightfully hers. She saw through the ruse, sued the court, and won.

She was sworn in as chief justice on February 1, 2013.

On the bench, Johnson emphasized the principles of fairness and equality. She served on the National Campaign on Best Practices in the area of Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts. She initiated the training and certification of the Limited English Proficiency Interpreters in the courts and installed an electronic filing system for the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Johnson ran the state’s entire court system while juggling family obligations. She married Paul Johnson early in her career and bore three children, Mark, David and Rachael Johnson. Tragedy struck when they lost son Mark to a heat stroke. After 23 years of marriage, the couple went their separate ways. David lives in Atlanta and Rachael followed in her mother’s footsteps. Johnson calls her “my baby judge.” “Rachael sits on the court where I started,“ at Civil District Court. She also takes care of her 98 year-old mother, Olivia Joshua.

Johnson has been widely celebrated by her peers with many honors and awards, including one from the National Association of Women Judges (NAWJ). She joins a distinguished list of Joan Dempsey Klein Award recipients that includes U.S. Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. According to NAWJ President Joan Churchill, “Chief Justice Johnson overcame many obstacles in her judicial career while making impressive contributions to women in the legal profession.”

Johnson ensured that the court staff was diverse. “I thought that was something that needed to be done. What I tried to do was open up opportunity for minority law clerks, opportunities to serve on boards and commissions. She estimates that she hired 35 or 40 law clerks during her tenure. “I tried to offer opportunities to males and females, Black and white, I tried to motivate them all.”

Johnson says Louisiana’s criminal justice system needs to be reformed.

“During the last five years, I dissented on mass incarceration and habitual offender laws. If we could just reduce our prison population, we’d improve life for everyone in this state. We’d have more parents home to raise their children and we could eliminate the generational prison pipeline. We need to understand how poverty is connected to incarceration. There are many people serving long terms for non-violent offenses. While I was actively involved, I tried to push forth issues important to me and promote change.”

Even though she’s retired, the chief justice vows to stay involved with several organizations, including the National Bar Association (NBA), an organization of Black judges and lawyers that focuses on judicial reform, fairness, justice and mentorship. “It’s incumbent on us to be involved to transform the judiciary and to find solutions for fairness and justice,” Johnson confirms.

This article originally published in the January 11, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.