For most lawyers, serving on their state’s highest court would be such a crowning achievement that the thought of retiring would be inconceivable. Yet, Washington Supreme Court Justice Bobbe Bridge recently did just that, with one year to go in her term. Why? She did it for the children.
The Center for Children and Youth Justice
As 2008 began, Justice Bridge turned in her robe to work full-time as president of The Center for Children and Youth Justice (the “Center”), a non-profit organization that she helped found in 2006 with the goal of reforming Washington’s juvenile justice and child welfare systems. Founding the Center was consistent with Bridge’s desire to work in a non-profit setting devoted to children’s issues after retiring from the court. It also was driven by the MacArthur Foundation’s decision to consider Washington for a $10 million, 5-year grant to carry out a major policy initiative — its “Models for Change” program — aimed at impelling changes to the juvenile justice system.
Bridge worked with people statewide during the second half of 2005 to convince the MacArthur Foundation to choose Washington as one of four states to receive funding for the Models for Change initiative. After Washington was selected, and at the urging of Janice O’Mahony, chair of the Governor’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee, Bridge approached the MacArthur Foundation with the idea of using a new organization as the lead entity for the project in Washington, and found it receptive.
Meanwhile, Bridge and others analyzed existing policy-oriented youth agencies that might serve as a model for the Center. With pro bono help from Garvey Schubert Barer, her former firm, the Center was incorporated as a 503(c) corporation in February 2006. In June, the MacArthur Foundation selected the Center as lead entity in Washington. The Center serves as local project coordinator, directing the strategic planning process, developing the state work plan and managing the entire effort within specified areas of the state.
With its selection in hand, Bridge recruited Michael Curtis to serve as the Center’s managing director and together they proceeded to open an office, prepare a brochure, enlist a board of directors and advisory council, and prepare a work plan that, in March 2007, they presented to the MacArthur Foundation. Under that plan, the Center is focusing on projects aimed to reduce the number of minority youth who land in the juvenile justice system, to improve the delivery of mental health services to young people in the system and to prevent truancy.
But the Center is more than an arm for the MacArthur initiative. Even before it opened an office, it received a second major project. During the summer of 2006, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation retained the Center to help it identify existing programs and best practices for keeping out of the juvenile justice system children who are at risk of falling into it, especially those failing in school. Part of this project called for the Center to identify populations who are underserved by existing programs. The Gates Foundation is considering targeting investment funds in those programs identified by the Center as best able to help vulnerable youth make a successful transition to adulthood.
Goals for the Center
From the start, Bridge wanted the Center to focus on systemic change, not delivery of services. The work funded by the MacArthur and Gates foundations is consistent with the Center’s goal to reform the juvenile justice system. But Bridge’s vision went farther. She wanted the Center to help reform the child-welfare system as a whole (which includes neglected and abused children), not just the juvenile justice system, and she wanted to honor and build on work previously done but not implemented.
To establish its bona fides in the child-welfare area, in February 2007 the Center — at its own expense — commenced a meta analysis to determine what other groups addressing system change in the child-welfare system had done and to assess how to move forward existing efforts that seemed viable.
Bridge hopes that the Center’s efforts will prompt substantial changes to the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, to ensure “a legal process that is more accessible, compassionate, and effective” for the children and families who enter it — voluntarily or involuntarily, including those who have committed crimes — and will make it easier for them to obtain services they need to become productive members of society.
It is no small task. Bridge commends governmental and other agencies for trying to assist at-risk children, but laments that “we have not done a very good job.” Too many children are in foster care and a disproportionate number of them suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Drop-out rates for children in foster care, Bridge notes, are “abysmal[ly]” high: only 30% graduate from high school, in contrast to a 70% graduation rate for other high school students. Bridge adds that substance abuse and homelessness rates among foster-care children also far exceed those of other children.
Bridge offers that things are somewhat better in the juvenile justice system, but there’s still a long way to go. For example, recidivism rates have declined, due to creative and evidence-based services and responses designed to deter offending behavior, but they remain high.
She adds that special considerations are needed to effectively assist certain children in both systems, for whom current services are not working well. These include members of the African American community (who are disproportionately represented in both systems), girls (who increasingly are involved in the juvenile justice system and for whom services historically provided to boys do not work), and Hispanics (for whom services need to be delivered in a culturally different way).
Bridge hopes that her skills at persuading government to change policies will help bring about the systemic changes needed to address these and other pressing problems that today’s youth face.
Early Involvement in Children’s Issues
No single event led Bridge to dedicate herself to children’s issues. She simply developed a sense that children, whom social workers, prosecutors and courts removed from their families and their normal course of development, needed to be restored to their families as soon as possible.
Bridge traces her interest in such issues to her days as a graduate student in political science at the University of Michigan. Her dissertation assessed whether changes to the juvenile justice system enacted in many jurisdictions during the late 1960s and early 1970s had made a difference in the treatment and rehabilitation of youth offenders. Her analysis focused on King County, where juveniles received most of the same constitutional and procedural protections as adult offenders, and Walla Walla County, where those protections were not yet provided.
Some of the judges with whom Bridge interacted during this study (most notably Judge Charles Z. Smith, the future Washington Supreme Court justice) persuaded her to give up political science for law school — to be part of the system and not just study it.
Upon graduating from the University of Washington School of Law in 1976, Bridge joined Garvey Schubert. Because it was a small firm at the time — she was only its 12th or 13th lawyer — Bridge’s practice encompassed a bit of everything and she had opportunities to start the firm’s family law practice and develop the lobbying skills that remain essential to her work for the Center. Although juvenile work was not part of her billable practice, Bridge did lots of pro bono work on child-related issues, including preparation of a juvenile code for the Quileute Tribe.
From Practitioner to Jurist
After 14 years in private practice, Bridge was ready to return to her political science roots, to focus on policy rather than strictly legal issues. After an unsuccessful candidacy for King County Council, Bridge concluded that she could best employ her skills and make a difference as a judge, so she submitted her name to be considered for appointment. In 1990, Governor Booth Gardner appointed Bridge to fill a vacancy on the King County Superior Court. She served 10 years, including the last two as presiding judge.
To Bridge, the best part of serving on the Superior Court were the years she was assigned to juvenile court, especially her four years (1994-97) as chief judge. Bridge considers her most important accomplishment as chief judge to be introduction of the unified family court system to King County — something she has long worked on to see implemented statewide.
Through the uniform system, Bridge notes, a cadre of judges stay in the juvenile court for a minimum of two years, often more, obtain training in family law issues exponentially greater than what was provided when she joined the court in 1990, and develop the legal expertise and extra-legal knowledge (on matters such as the dynamics of addiction, domestic violence and child developmental needs) that is essential for competent decision making. And by appointing case managers who coordinate multiple cases involving a child or family so that all are considered together, usually by one judge, decisions are more cohesive than if multiple cases floated independently through the system, with one judge unaware of how his or her decisions impact other cases involving the same persons.
As much as Bridge relished her involvement in the juvenile system, it was emotionally draining. Even today, barely a week passes that Bridge does not think at least once about a child who, more than 10 years ago, was killed after being returned to her parents. Although Bridge remains convinced that she made the proper decision based on the evidence presented and took appropriate steps to protect the child, including retaining jurisdiction to require continued reporting and putting in place all recommended services, she still finds it hard not to wonder whether a different decision would have had a better outcome.
On to the Supreme Court
In 1999, when illness forced Justice Barbara Durham to retire, Bridge was approached to gauge her interest in completing Durham’s term. Bridge was conflicted. She loved her job on the Superior Court and was only halfway through terms as presiding judge and as president of the King County Superior Court Judges Association. But “how could she not consider” such “a fantastic honor” that would allow her to help decide the most important legal issues in the state? Bridge also became convinced that the Supreme Court would provide another forum for trying to improve the legal system for children. She was Governor Gary Locke’s first Supreme Court appointment.
Bridge found her time on the court rewarding. She enjoyed using her advocacy skills to persuade her colleagues and found that the other justices were far more collegial than their widely differing views might suggest. While Bridge deeply regrets the DUI incident that put her “in the spotlight in ways that [she] would never wish on anyone,” she tries to find positives in that incident: a soul-searching process that helped her grow as a person and created incentives to work even harder, and “wonderful support,” even from people she did not know, for which she will forever be grateful.
Naturally, Bridge remained active in children’s issues while on the Supreme Court, chairing and/or otherwise participating in court committees, commissions and task forces devoted to various issues. Bridge originally planned to complete her term, but the Center’s growing work, together with her ongoing obligations to the Court and other organizations, proved to be too much. Because Bridge wanted to place her personal imprint on the Center and not be just a figurehead, she began to look for an appropriate time to retire. In June 2007, Bridge announced that she would leave the Court at year-end.
Community Involvement and Recognition
The Center is hardly the first nonprofit with which Bridge has been associated. Currently, she chairs the board of YouthCare, which is dedicated to educating, employing and empowering Seattle’s vulnerable homeless youth. She also chairs the advisory committee to the University of Washington’s NEW (National Education for Women’s) Leadership Puget Sound, which trains young women to be community leaders. Bridge and her husband also established a professorship in child advocacy at the University of Washington School of Law.
Perhaps most fittingly, because it recognizes her involvement in both her work as a judge and on behalf of children, the childcare facility at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent — the first court-based childcare facility in the Pacific Northwest, which opened during Bridge’s tenure as Superior Court presiding judge — was named in honor of her and her husband.
Living a Balanced Life
Perhaps surprising, given her longtime devotion to children, Bridge claims the hardest job she ever had was to strike a balance between her professional obligations and raising her own children. While Bridge acknowledges that she missed some important events in their lives, she’s convinced that overall she struck the right balance and that her children turned out well.
Bridge stresses the importance for all lawyers to be proactive in trying to achieve a balance in their lives. That balance, she hopes, will include time to give back to the community and the profession. As Bridge observes, “a civilized society needs the participation and the skills of lawyers in determining how we are governed, how our communities are run, and how services are offered to the community.” Of course, she suggests, an essential place to start in this endeavor is by caring for the children.
Joe Bringman practices in the Commercial Litigation Group at Perkins Coie LLP, focusing on securities and corporate governance issues. A former KCBA officer and trustee, Bringman is an occasional contributor to this feature.
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