News-Record.com

It's not the norm for a candidate for statewide office to leave the country for a month during the campaign, but ...

When you're running for a seat on the N.C. Supreme Court, and you have a chance to teach a summer law course with a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court ... in Venice, Italy ... well ...

"I think you just don't pass up the opportunity to teach with Ruth Bader Ginsburg," said Suzanne Reynolds, a Wake Forest University law professor and candidate for the state's highest court.

Ginsburg made the commitment to participate in the summer program during a visit to Wake Forest three years ago. She and Reynolds will lead a two-week course in comparative constitutional law, comparing U.S. and Italian legal issues.

Reynolds will stay two additional weeks teaching comparative family law.

Wake Forest has its own place in Venice, called Casa Artom.

Considering she's a first-time candidate, and she's running against incumbent Justice Bob Edmunds of Greensboro, giving up a month's campaign time is risky for Reynolds. But then, who pays attention to judicial races in July, anyway?

Besides, the academic experience plays to her strength. Unlike Edmunds, who served on the Court of Appeals before advancing to the Supreme Court eight years ago, Reynolds hasn't been a judge. Nor has she been a prosecutor, as he has. And even her private practice experience goes back a long way, before she began her 26-year career at Wake.

She's running for the Supreme Court as a professor -- a scholar and teacher of the law.

"A law professor's background is perfect for the appellate court," she said during a visit yesterday. "Especially a law professor who has stayed in touch with the legal community."

"Reynolds wrote the authoritative source on family law used by North Carolina lawyers," a March profile in Wake Forest Magazine noted.

"One of my advantages is experience as a law professor who studies legal opinions and teaches them to my students," Reynolds added.

She believes her strengths -- writing, teaching, clarifying the law -- fit into the job description for Supreme Court justices. When they write opinions, they should be explaining the law.

Reynolds adamantly refuses to criticize Edmunds or any of his opinions, but she is challenging the "status quo" of the court. It doesn't accept enough cases on discretionary review, doesn't write enough opinions and leaves too many conflicting decisions from the Court of Appeals unresolved, she said.

I plan to explore those issues in more detail next week.

Her law professor argument carries more weight in states where judges are appointed rather than elected.

In appointment states, merit selection committees often look to the "academy" for judges, Reynolds said, citing as her model former Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Ellen Peters, who was selected from Yale Law School.

And then there was Ginsburg, a former Columbia University law professor before her appointment to the federal bench.

North Carolina's tradition is different, though. None of the current justices taught law before joining the court.

Reynolds hopes to change the pattern, but she won't be campaigning during July.