By Judge Michael Warren
Oakland County Circuit Court
"Trailblazer" is the most fitting moniker attributable to Judge Alice L. Gilbert. Her trailblazing cut across many paths, and the paths that she blazed are more aglow now than ever. Back when the glass ceiling was made of marble, she smashed all gender barriers.
Gilbert, a Bloomfield Hills resident who served two stints on the Oakland County Circuit Court, died December 9. She was 88.
A private family service was held on December 13 at the Ira Kaufman Chapel in Southfield. Rabbi E.B. Freedman officiated.
Growing up in the Chicago area, Gilbert resolved that that she would attend the best college possible and moved across the country. Majoring in political science and economics, she attended Wellesley College outside Boston, leaving in her last year for Northwestern Law School which offered a new program combining the bachelor, L.L.B. and J.D. degrees. A life-long learner, her post-graduate studies included work at the Harvard Graduate School of Public Administration, Wayne State Law School, University of Detroit School of Law, the University of Michigan, and several courses at the National College of the State Judiciary at the University of Nevada.
Her trailblazing continued in law school-she was just one of two women. She then vanquished pervasive sexism when she was elected as a justice of the peace for Bloomfield Township in 1961 and re-elected in 1965. Since those were not full-time positions (no robes were involved), she was also appointed as a justice of the peace for the City of Bloomfield in 1963. She was admitted to the United States Supreme Court bar in 1964. Before and while serving as a justice of the peace, she practiced law for 11 years.
Her trailblazing exploded outside of the courtroom. She was a founding member of the Michigan Chapter of the National Organization of Women (NOW), the first woman member of the Oakland County Bar Association, and a founder of the Oakland County Women's Bar Association.
Although impressive, being a justice of the peace was not enough to fulfill her trailblazing aspirations. Under the Michigan Constitution of 1963, the state established district courts, and she was elected to the 48th District Court in the first wave of elections in 1968 and re-elected in 1974, eventually serving as chief judge.
Her trailblazing also involved how she worked. She was the first judge in Michigan to utilize and implement computer technology for court administration. Not content with just serving in office, she continued her impressive leadership by founding the Michigan District Court Judges Association, serving as its first president, and drafting its constitution and bylaws. She also assisted in the formulation of the District Court Rules of Procedure.
She also served in leadership positions in a variety of community organizations involving law and judges, along with being on the Northern Oakland County Girl Scout Council.
The year 1976 was not only notable as the country's Bicentennial, it saw her become just the third woman elected as a circuit court judge in the history of the State of Michigan, and the first in Oakland County. In fact, she was the first woman elected to a countywide position in Oakland County. Recognizing her energy, intelligence, and integrity, the GOP nominated her to run for Supreme Court in 1978 taking on the revered former Governor Soapy Williams but the voters decided she was better suited as a trial judge.
Judge Gilbert served on the Oakland County Circuit Court until 1992, when in mid-May she made a surprise resignation announcement. She had decided to run for U.S. Congress. It was one heck of a campaign, and she was defeated in the primary by soon-to-be Congressman Joe Knollenberg. Despite the loss, she did not miss a beat. She went back into private practice as a mediator, arbitrator, special master, and receiver with the law firm of Hyman Lippitt.
Yet the siren song of the bench re-captivated her. In 1994, she ran for a vacant seat and was back on the Circuit Court. During her second stint, she served on an International Commission on Human & Civil Rights under the new constitution for the Republic of South Africa, and presented on Tyranny, Justice and the Law: the Nazis and Beyond, in Berlin, Germany. She served another 8 years before her retirement of December 2002.
Over her career, she had presided over 110,000 cases. As impressive a resume as that is, it hardly reveals the woman.
She remarked to a newspaper, "I started with a philosophy that I have one goal-living my life. That's family and career. I never divided it."
She was married, divorced, remarried, and then widowed. She has three children and nine grandchildren who she loved dearly.
In addition to her familial inclinations, she was a bright and determined lawyer, and resolved to make her mark and go her own way. Bucking all custom, when she married, she maintained her maiden name. When she was sworn in as a lawyer in 1957, the Wayne County clerk required that she use her married name and admitted her to practice law as Alice Greenblatt. She would have none of that-she sued. She prevailed in In Re: Alice Gilbert and was permitted to practice law as "Alice Gilbert."
She reflected that feminism was barely a word at the time. But that was not going to be a barrier to her career.
"I always considered myself a person first and foremost," Gilbert said. "To me, it didn't matter that I was a woman. I was educated in a public school, and believed I could do anything I wanted."
She decided to run for justice of peace because she was dissatisfied with its performance and standing in the judicial system.
"My goal was to elevate the court to its proper place," she said. "The majority of people get their first impression of the justice system at the people's court. I didn't think they were being served with what was in place."
While a justice of the peace, Gilbert was accustomed to having her eldest child under her desk as she tended to her judicial duties.
When she ran for justice of the peace, she was pregnant with her second child.
"I refused to go out in public, because nobody was going to vote for a pregnant woman to be their judge," she said.
She won anyway-and delivered the baby 36 hours after the polls closed.
During her time at the District Court, she was dubbed "Hangin' Alice" because of her firm sentences and no-nonsense demeanor. She did not mind-in defiance of prevailing stereotypes, it assured the public that a woman would not be too soft.
However, with all that under her belt, we might be surprised that she reported to The Oakland Press that her proudest accomplishment was her involvement in the late 1970s with the National Women's Political Caucus. She moved at its convention that it establish a committee to help women garner appointments for federal judicial appointments at a time that the federal bench was expanding by one-third.
When she made the surprise decision to run for Congress, she was compelled by her desire to serve: "I had to do it. I wanted to be a part of the solution to some of society's problems."
Her decades in office came with lighter and more somber moments-the mundane to the groundbreaking.
On the lighter side, she conducted court on the lawn of the courthouse when the air conditioning broke down. On the more somber side, she ordered a former Detroit Red Wing to write an essay as part of his sentence. She halted reckless and dangerous drag racing on Woodward Avenue with severe sanctions. In 1986, she reduced a $7 million medical malpractice jury award to $106,696, finding the award was excessive. The Judicial Tenure Commission investigated this decision and found no wrongdoing-neither did the Court of Appeals.
"I stood up for the right of judges to make decisions," she explained.
Plus, she made international headlines when she permanently enjoined retired pathologist Dr. Jack Kevorkian from using his "suicide machine" (as Judge Gilbert termed it, or the "Thantron" as the doctor termed it). To make a very lengthy discussion simple, Dr. Kevorkian assisted Janet Adkins to end her life by creating a machine that would intravenously dispense three life ending drugs.
Adkins was suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and Judge Gilbert found that Dr. Kevorkian went forward "after a single encounter, a dinner conversation, without the benefit of taking a history, conducting and making an independent diagnosis, and contrary to the advice of her primary care physician."
The procedure was dubbed "physician assisted suicide" and it grabbed the attention of the globe. Dr. Kevorkian intended to assist others in similar procedures. Then Oakland County Prosecutor Robert Thompson brought a civil suit to stop Dr. Kevorkian-who was represented by the rising star Geoffrey Fieger.
Judge Gilbert issued a preliminary injunction, and the case went to trial on January 1991. Thompson, now president and chief legal counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, explained that "Janet's assisted suicide sparked a nationwide controversy over the legal, moral and ethical issues surrounding the right to die. It also catapulted Kevorkian to world-wide fame. The media characterized him as an 'Angel of Mercy.'"
With the high stakes and the competing personalities, the case could have spiraled into points unknown but for the steady hand of Judge Gilbert.
Joan Young, her former colleague and later chief judge of the Oakland County Circuit Court, reflected that Gilbert in general "didn't get rattled, had complete control of what was going, and managed it very well."
Former Prosecutor Thompson, in turn, lauded Gilbert's entire career and her conduct during the first Kevorkian case, noting that the trial "embodied her integrity, judicial courage and commitment to the rule of law ...."
The bench trial involved 14 witnesses and 15 exhibits. Judge Gilbert rendered a searing 35-page opinion issued February 5, 1991. The judge read her opinion in court, at times squarely looking at Kevorkian. In the course of her opinion, she wrote:
"Dr. Kevorkian envisions himself as a charitable maverick, destined to revolutionize the practice of medicine. His peers look upon him as a menace that threatens the existence of the medical profession and those creeds that have endured since the time of Hippocrates. This Court finds it difficult to believe that the physicians of the past 2,000 years have been blind to the need, and only Dr. Kevorkian has the vision to lead them out of the darkness. At the present time, patient self-determination does not encompass self-extermination effectuated by a physician. Patients can not confer a right upon a doctor to assist a suicide. Patients can not dictate to a physician how to practice medicine."
The trial and opinion captivated The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People Magazine, and many other leading media outlets.
But reducing a judge down to one or two cases or anecdotes is completely unfair. Her colleague, retired Oakland Court Circuit Court Judge Rudy Nichols, reflected that "Alice is a wonderful person and great colleague.... Affable and friendly .... Both wise and witty, she made our lunch hours a real pleasure. I will always remember her insight in speaking about world events .... She was a genuinely delightful colleague."
Judge Young, who spent some serious time driving Judge Gilbert around the state during her Supreme Court campaign, concurred that she "was extremely bright" and had blazed a trail for women across Michigan.
Her former staff attorney shared with me a link to her appearance on the old game show "What's My Line" (https://youtu.be/1gRwJoE2tCI?t=251) where she was simply enchanting. She also observed that when a lawyer cited a case that predated 1920, Judge Gilbert would note that she did not recognize any cases prior to women's suffrage and passage of the 19th Amendment; and, when an attorney referred to a deed that stated "man and wife," she would good-naturedly interrogate the attorney if that was the same as saying "woman and husband."
John Skrzynski, currently chief of Circuit Court Assistant Prosecutor, appeared before Judge Gilbert for many years. In a prior newspaper feature, he gave her the highest compliment: "She was a good judge, very smart, and she had a great respect for the people who came before her. I always felt safe with her, safe that she was going to make the right decision. If you were going to lose, you'd lose for a good reason. She had the power and she used it wisely."
When Gilbert decided to step down early, on her own terms, she reflected, "It was just time for me to move on. I wanted to do other things with my life. Being a judge is the greatest job, and the greatest opportunity to serve the public. But there is a stress connected to the job. As a judge, you hold the fate of other people in your hands. That is a lot of responsibility."
Life changed in many ways upon her retirement. Not only was she freed from the responsibility of judging, she had more time for family and travel. She also practiced law again, joined the Michigan Film Commission, and began writing projects. There was an unexpected consequence as well: "I went from Judge to Alice. I rediscovered I had a first name. People are actually calling me 'Alice' again."
She was also a voracious traveler, including climbing the Andes Mountains and going on expeditions to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, England, France, Italy, Egypt, Israel, Russia, China, and Africa.
Simply put, Judge Gilbert was a legend. The Oakland County Legal News summed it up well when it reflected that Judge Gilbert was a "a revered member of the Circuit Court" as did former County Commissioner Peter M. Webster when he expressed the sentiments of the Board of Commissioners during an award ceremony at which he declared that "Judge Alice Gilbert's illustrious career reflects years of commitment and dedication. She is a role model for many in Oakland County and the legal profession."
Gilbert was the beloved wife of the late Murray P. Greenblatt and the late Dr. Herbert J. Bloom. She was the cherished mother of Gwen Gilbert, Greg (Carolynn) Gilbert, and Dean (Christina) Greenblatt. She was the loving grandmother of Ariel Zekelman, Leah Zekelman, Jonah Zekelman, Andrew Gilbert, Jennifer (Michael) McManus, Julia Gilbert, Katherine Greenblatt, David Greenblatt, and Allison Greenblatt. She was preceded in death by her brother, Henry Gilbert, and her parents, Rebecca and Alfred Gilbert.
Memorial contributions may be made to the Jewish Hospice & Chaplaincy Network in West Bloomfield or the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills.
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Judge's successor on court remains 'much in her debt'
By Tom Kirvan
Legal News
A former member of the State Board of Education, Oakland County Circuit Judge Michael Warren has been a prolific writer over the course of his 28-year legal career, writing extensively about education reform, technology initiatives, and the importance of American history and civics.
He also has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of all things Alice Gilbert, the legendary judge who Warren had the challenge of succeeding on the Oakland County Circuit Court bench.
Gilbert, who retired from the Circuit Court in 2002 after a particularly distinguished judicial career, was the proverbial "tough act to follow," according to Warren, who with his then 10-year-old daughter Leah is the co-founder of Patriot Week,
Warren's admiration for Gilbert began before he officially donned his judicial robes following his appointment to the bench by then Governor John Engler.
"With her surprise retirement, the bench got a secondary bonus surprise my appointment was quite the 'bolt from the blue,'" admitted Warren, who formerly was a partner with Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn in Detroit, where he worked on mergers, acquisitions, securities, and education matters.
"I was not a litigator, and many lawyers were highly skeptical of my acumen," Warren said.
This, despite the fact that he was a University of Michigan Law School grad who at the time of his court appointment was serving as executive director of The New Common School Foundation.
In an effort to help Warren make a smooth transition to the bench, Gilbert offered a helping hand.
"She took me under her wing and gave me the lay of the courthouse and courtroom in a very generous, kind, and illuminating fashion," said Warren. "I remain very much in her debt. I hired several of her staff members, including now Judge Kameshia Gant."
Gilbert, whose death this month made a bleak year even sadder, also was a "trailblazer" in how she worked, said Warren, who helped shepherd the Oakland County Circuit Court into the electronic frontier, piloting its e-filing and paperless docket project in 2007.
"Near and dear to my heart, she was the first judge in Michigan to utilize and implement computer technology for court administration," Warren said of Gilbert, teasing "I understand that they had hand cranks and cathodes" for the task.
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