Another long-time member of the state’s highest court is retiring.
After more than forty years of judicial service, the Appellate Judicial Commission announced it is accepting applications to fill the vacancy that Missouri Supreme Court Judge Patricia Breckenridge’s retirement will create.
She will reach 70 years old next month on Oct. 14 while Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice George W. Draper III retired this summer after turning 70 on August 5.
Breckenridge was appointed to the Supreme Court of Missouri in September 2007 and served as Chief Justice from July 2015 to June 2017. She previously was a judge on the Western District for the Missouri Court of Appeals where she served as Chief Judge from 1998 to 2000.
She received her B.S. in Agricultural Economics and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Following law school, she practiced law at Russell, Brown, Bickel & Breckenridge. While practicing, she also served as assistant municipal judge and in 1982, was appointed associate circuit judge.
Under a provision of the Missouri Constitution, if a judge is still in office on their 70th birthday, they forfeit their pension, which encourages the judiciary to retire before their 70th birthday.
“From my perspective, I think we make it too easy to give a date but then again a number of those people are just still very effective practitioners,” said Chris Hohn, an attorney at the Thompson Coburn law firm.
While many judges continue working within the judiciary on assignment as senior judges, others choose to return to their lawyer roots.
“You see a number of judges who have left join private practices after they've retired from the bench,” Hohn told the St. Louis Record.
For example, when Judge Booker Shaw retired from the bench, he joined Thompson Coburn.
“We do have some former judges as current partners or lawyers in the firm,” Hohn said in an interview. “Booker Shaw is in our tort practice group, and he's currently in trial.”
Shaw was a judge on the Eastern District Missouri Court of Appeals for seven years, including one year as Chief Judge.
“Thompson Coburn is structured as a traditional partnership so he's a partner along with the other partners who own the law firm,” Hohn added.
The Appellate Judicial Commission is responsible for selecting nominees for vacancies on the Supreme Court, and the Court of Appeals.
The Appellate Judicial Commission is made up of the Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court, three lay members and three attorneys.