[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 80 (Tuesday, May 14, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2806-S2807]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO MARILYN SKOGLUND

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I would like to take a moment to pay 
tribute to a remarkable and unique person, Vermont Supreme Court 
Justice Marilyn Skoglund, who will soon be retiring after serving 25 
years with the Vermont judiciary.
  Justice Skoglund is what we all want to see in a jurist and public 
servant. She is dedicated, personable, and highly committed to the rule 
of law, but her path to the Vermont Supreme Court was anything but 
typical. As a single mother working hard to get by in the 1970s, law 
school was not an option. Instead, she took advantage of Vermont's 
``Reading the Law'' approach that allowed her to study while serving as 
an apprentice of sorts with the Vermont Attorney General's office. 
After being admitted to the Vermont Bar, she would go on to serve as 
chief of the civil law and public protection divisions in the AG's 
office before being appointed to the bench in 1994 by then-Governor 
Howard Dean. She would be elevated to the supreme court just 3 years 
later. At the time, she was only the second woman to serve on Vermont's 
highest court. Today, women make up the majority of its five justices.
  I have had the pleasure of knowing Justice Skoglund during her many 
years of living and working in my hometown of Montpelier. Her personal 
story was so compelling that she was my first choice in 2008 to keynote 
Vermont's Women's Economic Opportunity Conference, an annual event I 
have now hosted for 23 years.
  But no tribute to Justice Skoglund would be complete if it did not 
mention her keen sense of humor. Perhaps it is this trait that has so 
deftly served her these many years, for as serious as the supreme court 
must be in delivering justice, Marilyn Skoglund has demonstrated time 
and again the benefit of

[[Page S2807]]

laughter in our lives. She finds the time to appreciate what some might 
only see as mundane; she cherishes her friendships, and she mentors 
those who will succeed us. By her own account, she has led a full life.
  I ask unanimous consent that these excerpts of the May 1 Seven Days 
profile of Justice Skoglund be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                     [From Seven Days, May 1, 2019]

  Justice Served: Marilyn Skoglund to Retire From the Vermont Supreme 
                                 Court

                            (By Paul Heintz)

       On her way out the door of her Montpelier home last Friday, 
     Vermont Supreme Court Justice Marilyn Skoglund rolled up her 
     right sleeve to show off her latest tattoo.
       ``I waited until my youngest daughter's wedding,'' the 
     justice said with a sneaky smile. ``I knew she wouldn't want 
     me to get it.''
       Written in a simple black cursive on the inside of her arm 
     were the words, ``Jag ar matt,'' a Swedish expression often 
     uttered in her childhood home at the conclusion of a family 
     meal. ``I am satisfied,'' she translated. ``I am full.''
       The 72-year-old jurist reflected for a moment--perhaps on a 
     life rich in family, friends, dogs and the law--and declared, 
     ``I am satisfied! I mean, what else can you say? I'm very 
     lucky. I am satisfied.''
       This week, Skoglund plans to inform Gov. Phil Scott that, 
     after 22 years on the state's highest court, she intends to 
     resign effective September 1.
       Skoglund's retirement brings to a close one of the most 
     remarkable and least likely careers in the Vermont 
     judiciary--that of a struggling single mother who passed the 
     bar without a day of law school and worked her way up to 
     become the second female justice in state history.
       Now, the famously irreverent attorney is looking for a new 
     challenge, be it the beginning Spanish class she plans to 
     take this fall or the online bartender course she's long 
     contemplated. ``I just need to take a chance and see what 
     else I can do before I drop dead,'' she said, letting loose 
     her trademark cackle.
       Skoglund's sense of humor has long served as the 
     ``collegiality glue'' on the court of five, according to 
     retired justice John Dooley. In her decades on the bench, she 
     has made it her mission to draw colleagues and staff members 
     out of their casework and into the world--through court 
     poetry slams, end-of-term parties and art openings at the 
     Supreme Court gallery she founded and oversees.
       ``I would describe her as a unifier,'' said Victoria 
     Westgate, a Burlington attorney who clerked with her from 
     2013 to 2014. The justice has also served as a role model to 
     a generation of young women in the law, Westgate said.
       Though Skoglund may be best known for her larger-than-life 
     personality, colleagues describe her as a deeply serious 
     jurist with an unmatched work ethic.
       ``Of all the justices I've worked with, I think she 
     probably put . . . more effort into preparing and 
     understanding a case than any,'' said Dooley, who served 
     alongside Skoglund for two of his three decades on the court 
     . . .
       Born in Chicago and raised in St. Louis, Skoglund had what 
     she describes as an ``idyllic childhood,'' replete with a 
     picket fence and parents who were ``the Swedish equivalent of 
     Ozzie and Harriet.'' Her father managed a steel treatment 
     plant and her mother, a former hairdresser and math tutor, 
     raised the future justice and her sister.
       Skoglund spent seven years meandering her way through 
     Southern Illinois University--a fine arts major and ``hippie 
     folk singer'' who worked, for a time, as a graphic designer 
     for the inventor and futurist Buckminster Fuller. She finally 
     earned her diploma after getting married and becoming 
     pregnant with her first daughter.
       The young family moved to Vermont in 1973 so that 
     Skoglund's husband could take a job teaching painting and 
     printmaking at Goddard College. They rented a small, 
     uninsulated cottage on a 500-acre dairy farm in Plainfield. 
     Skoglund learned to milk cows, taught photography and worked 
     as an editor at Goddard. The marriage didn't last, though, 
     and soon she was raising her daughter on her own.
       Skoglund found herself relying upon the generosity of 
     Walter Smith, the 68-year-old dairy farmer who served as her 
     landlord and her ``very own personal version of welfare.'' He 
     provided firewood when she needed it and let her dip raw milk 
     from the bulk tank. When she and her daughter were low on 
     food, they would join Smith for cans of chicken noodle soup 
     and mayonnaise sandwiches.
       ``He saw me through it,'' she said.
       Skoglund's experience with poverty later informed her work 
     on the bench and, she said, gave her ``a very good 
     understanding of desperation and frustration and what it 
     causes people to do.'' ``I think I'm the only justice that's 
     ever been poor,'' she said.
       After completing a six-month paralegal class, Skoglund 
     landed a clerkship in the Vermont Attorney General's Office 
     and began reading for the law--an alternative route to the 
     bar that enables aspiring attorneys to bypass law school 
     through independent study. It was a solitary, self-motivated 
     education, but I am disciplined,'' she wrote in a recent 
     essay about her unconventional path. ``In the central office 
     of the attorney general, I was the only student with about 50 
     `teachers.' ''
       Skoglund spent four years clerking for Louis Peck, then the 
     chief assistant attorney general and later a Supreme Court 
     justice. She would run lines for Peck, an amateur actor, and 
     he would school her in the law. Skoglund credits him with 
     informing her ``legally conservative'' approach. ``I don't 
     take liberties with the language, and I don't read myself 
     into it,'' she said. ``It's not about you, Marilyn.''
       Skoglund spent 17 years in the Attorney General's Office, 
     eventually serving as chief of its civil law division and 
     then its public protection division. She was appointed to the 
     Superior Court in 1994 and to the Supreme Court in 1997.
       ``It's like candy,'' Skoglund said of her current gig. ``I 
     have never been bored.''
       The pace of the job wouldn't allow it. The supremes hear an 
     average of 120 full cases a year, plus many more appeals on 
     the so-called ``rocket docket.'' They're also consumed by the 
     myriad unseen administrative duties of the judicial branch, 
     such as divvying up its ``shoestring'' budget and managing 
     the lower courts.
       ``This all takes hours when all I want to be doing is 
     reading cases,'' Skoglund said. . . .
       According to Skoglund, her acid prose occasionally gives 
     her law clerks ``panic attacks.'' But members of her tight 
     fraternity of former clerks praise her ``dedication to 
     raising a new generation'' of lawyers, as Todd Daloz put it.
       ``She has a real energy and a real humor and a real joy of 
     life,'' said Daloz, who clerked for Skoglund from 2009 to 
     2011 and now serves as associate general counsel for the 
     Vermont State Colleges System.
       ``When I hire [clerks], I explain that I'm hiring my best 
     friend for the next year,'' Skoglund said. ``I have to be 
     able to come in and vent and bitch and moan and get solace 
     from them.''. . .
       For the past 35 years, Skoglund has lived in a tall, brown- 
     and green-shingled house perched above the Statehouse on the 
     southern boundary of Hubbard Park. The place is crammed with 
     books and artwork and features a ``wall of dogs'' consisting 
     of canine paintings she's collected. ``It's kind of a magical 
     place for me,'' she said of her home, where she does much of 
     her off-the bench legal work. ``It's just a sanctuary.''
       Skoglund's two grown daughters, an obstetrician and a 
     neuropsychologist, have long since moved out. Her current 
     roommates include a 4-year-old goldendoodle named Johnny and, 
     during Vermont's four-month legislative session, Senate 
     Majority Leader Becca Balint (D-Windham). ``I always say I 
     have the best roommate,'' Balint said. ``Sometimes it's seven 
     o'clock in the morning and we're both crying because we're 
     laughing so hard.'' . . .
       Last Friday morning, after showing off her tattoo, Skoglund 
     wrapped an unused dog leash around her waist and commenced 
     her three-block commute down the hill and past the Statehouse 
     to the Supreme Court. Johnny pranced along in front of her, 
     relishing his freedom.
       Skoglund gushed about her daughters and 9-year-old 
     granddaughter, with whom she had spent the previous weekend.
       ``They're not thrilled with this tattoo--at least, the 
     younger one isn't,'' she conceded. ``But that's the way it 
     goes, ladies. Mom's gotta do what Mom's gotta do.''
       Skoglund entered the court through a side door and showed 
     off one of her most concrete contributions to the 
     institution: an art gallery in the lobby of the building that 
     she's curated for the past 20 years.
       ``When I first got here, it was the hall of dead 
     justices,'' she said, referring to the oil paintings of her 
     predecessors, now relegated to the stairways and upper 
     floors. In their place was a series of mixed-media pieces by 
     the artist Janet Van Fleet consisting of red buttons and 
     plastic animals. Johnny led Skoglund up to her third-floor 
     office, which features a smiling boar's head mounted to a 
     wall. ``Behind you is Emmet, my amanuensis,'' she said, 
     gesturing at the hairy creature. ``A lot of those wild boar 
     things look scary and vicious. He's just sweet.''
       Skoglund took a seat behind her cluttered desk and said, 
     with a resigned tone of voice, ``I've been here for 22 years. 
     It's time to go.''
       Asked how she hoped people would remember her, Skoglund 
     answered without hesitation. ``I worked hard,'' she said. ``I 
     took my position very seriously. I never cut corners. I 
     understood the responsibility. That's what I hope.''

                          ____________________