Public Notice Detail
Minnesota Supreme Court, Court of Appeals to Swear in Newest Members September 3
Posted: Friday, August 30, 2002
ST. PAUL, Minn. (Aug. 30, 2002) – Justice Helen M. Meyer, Judge Sam Hanson and Judge Wilhelmina Wright will be sworn in at an investiture ceremony at 1 p.m. Tuesday, September 3, at the Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul. Justice Meyer and Judge Hanson are the eighty-fourth and eighty-fifth associate justices, respectively, appointed to the Minnesota Supreme Court. Judge Wright is the thirty-fourth judge appointed to the Minnesota Court of Appeals.
Governor Jesse Ventura appointed Justice Meyer, and Judges Hanson and Wright on June 6, 2002. Justice Meyer replaces Justice Joan Ericksen Lancaster, who left the state Supreme Court on June 14, 2002, to become a U.S. District Court Judge in the District of Minnesota. Judge Hanson fills the vacancy that will result from Justice Edward Stringer’s August 31, 2002, retirement. Judge Wright fills the opening left by Hanson upon his elevation to the Supreme Court.
Helen M. Meyer
Justice Meyer, who was sworn in privately on August 5 so she could begin work prior to the public ceremony, had been the owner of Meyer and Associates in St. Louis Park, Minn., since 1996. Her civil trial practice included mediation and arbitration work. In 1987, she was a founding partner of the Pritzker and Meyer law firm in Minneapolis and prior to that she was an associate attorney with the law firm of Schwebel, Goetz, Sieben and Hanson in Minneapolis. She is a 1976 graduate of the University of Minnesota and received her law degree from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn. (1982).
She was a member of the Commission on Judicial Selection, a board member of the Minnesota State Board of Legal Certification and the Minnesota Trial Lawyers Association, chair of the Minnesota State Bar Association’s Civil Litigation Section Governing Council and the Bar Association Committee on Judicial Evaluation, among other legal organizations. Justice Meyer, 48, was born in St. Joseph, Minn., and raised on a Stearns County dairy farm. She is married to Jan Halverson. They have three sons.
Sam Hanson
Judge Hanson joined the Court of Appeals in November 2000. From 1966 to 2000, he was an attorney and partner at the Minneapolis law firm of Briggs and Morgan, where he specialized in civil litigation and regulated industries. He served as the firm’s president from 1988 to 1993. He also worked as a law clerk for Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Robert Sheran (1965-1966) and for Hennepin County District Court Judge Douglas Amdahl (1964-1965). He graduated from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., in 1961 and earned his law degree with honors from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul (1965).
He is a member of the National Boards of Law Examiners, the Supreme Court Rules of Civil Appellate Procedure Advisory Committee, is chair of the William Mitchell College of Law Board of Trustees and is on the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights. Judge Hanson, 63, works on community development programs in the United States and around the world through Global Volunteers. He was born in Mankato, Minn., and lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Mirja. They have six children and three grandchildren.
Wilhelmina M. Wright
Judge Wright has served on the Ramsey County District Court since November 2000. Prior to her judicial appointment, she was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Minneapolis, where she prosecuted federal criminal cases in the Economic Crime and Major Crime sections beginning in 1995. She was a civil litigation attorney with Hogan & Hartson, LLP in Washington, D.C., and Houston from 1991-1995, and served as a law clerk for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Damon J. Keith in Detroit from 1989-1991. She graduated cum laude from Yale University in New Haven, Conn., in 1986 and earned her law degree from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass. in 1989.
She serves on the William Mitchell College of Law Board of Trustees, the State Bar Association Task Force on the American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the Ramsey County Community Corrections Advisory Board, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Board of Directors and the Yale Alumni Schools Committee. She has previously served on the Board of Directors of the Girl Scout Council of St. Croix Valley, the St. Paul Public Schools Graduate Standards Advisory Committee and volunteered at Clare House, an adult foster home for people living with AIDS. Judge Wright, 38, was born in Norfolk, Va., and lives in St. Paul with her husband and their daughter.
What: Swearing-in ceremony for Justice Helen M. Meyer and Judge Hanson to the Minnesota Supreme Court; Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright to the Minnesota Court of Appeals.
When: 1 p.m., Tuesday, September 3, 2002. Still and television cameras must be set up by 12:30 p.m. on a media platform near the stage. A mult box will be provided. The program for the ceremony is attached.
Where: Cortile, Landmark Center, 75 West Fifth Street, St. Paul, MN.