Gov. Michael Parson has appointed appellate court judge Robin Ransom to serve on the Missouri Supreme Court.
She will fill the seat left vacant by Judge Laura Denvir Stith who retired in March. Ransom will be the first African American woman to serve on the state’s highest court.
“It's tremendous that any person of any race or gender or any American has the opportunity to work and strive and attain any position in our country,” said appeals court Judge Gary Lynch.
Ransom has served on the Missouri Court of Appeals with Lynch since January 2019.
“I'm on the Southern District and Judge Ransom is on the Eastern District located in St. Louis but we're all just one court,” Lynch told the St. Louis Record. “I'm tickled to death for Judge Ransom. She's an excellent choice as are the other two candidates that were presented to the governor. They were just all three excellent choices.”
The other two nominees that Gov. Parson considered were Donald E. Burrell Jr. and William M. Corrigan Jr. Burrell currently serves on the Southern District Missouri Court of Appeals in Springfield while Corrigan is a circuit judge on St. Louis County’s 21st Judicial Circuit in St. Louis
“The governor had three very qualified candidates to choose from and it wasn't an easy decision but it’s pretty clear that he has a good relationship with Judge Ransom as far as person to person and just getting along,” Lynch said.
Prior to being an appellate court justice, Ransom’s experience includes working at the St. Louis County public defender’s office from 1992 to 1995, then at the St. Louis County prosecutor’s office from 1995 to 1996. She joined the St. Louis County family court in 1996 as a staff attorney and, in 2002, was a commissioner of its juvenile division. Ransom subsequently became a circuit judge in St. Louis County in 2008.
“Every judge brings their unique professional and personal experiences to the bench and as a circuit judge, Judge Ranson got exposed to all areas of the law and that's got to be very helpful to her to have that understanding at the trial level,” Lynch said.
Ransom was raised in St. Louis where she earned college credits at both St. Louis Community College’s Forest Park Campus and Saint Louis University while attending high school. She earned a bachelor of arts in political science and sociology in 1988 from Douglass Residential College at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, in New Brunswick, and her law degree in 1991 from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law.
Lynch predicted that her duties on the Missouri Supreme Court will vary from the duties she has grown accustomed to on the Missouri Court of Appeals because the most difficult legal cases land at the Missouri Supreme Court.
"They have to wrestle with those but they are fewer in number,” he said. “A lot of what the public does not see about the Missouri Supreme Court is the administrative functions and the various committees. It’s the responsibility of each of the Supreme Court justices to take on some of the areas of that administrative responsibility to supervise the development of court rules. On the Court of Appeals, we do some of that but not near to the level they do on the Supreme Court.”