[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16683-16684]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 TRIBUTE TO CHIEF JUSTICE JEFF AMESTOY

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, this summer, Marcelle and I were honored to 
be at the Vermont Supreme Court with former Supreme Court Justice Jeff 
Amestoy, his wife Susan, and their daughters. Like all Vermonters, I 
have respected his tenure, both as attorney general and as chief 
justice, as both were exemplary. While the portrait captures the image 
of the Jeff Amestoy his friends honor and care for, his words are what 
should be read by everyone who cares about our judiciary. Jeff's 
commitment to the law, our justice system, and our sense of what makes 
Vermont the State we love is in his words. They were so impressive I 
asked him for a copy, and I ask unanimous consent that they be printed 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

  Remarks of Chief Justice Jeff Amestoy (Retired) at Portrait Ceremony


                         Vermont Supreme Court

                    (Montpelier, VT, Aug. 13, 2010)

       Governor Douglas, Senator Leahy, Chief Justice Reiber, 
     family and friends:
       Thank you for the honor you do me by attending this 
     ceremony. Thank you Justice Burgess for your generous 
     introductory remarks. Brian Burgess served as Deputy Attorney 
     General when I was Attorney General. I doubt that either of 
     us could have foreseen this day but here we are together 
     again. History may not repeat itself, but it sometimes 
     rhymes.
       Thank you Kenneth McIntosh Daly--artist, rancher, and 
     friend who has once again made the trip from California to 
     Vermont.
       And thank you to my daughters Katherine, Christina, and 
     Nancy for the unveiling.
       This September I begin my seventh year as a Fellow at the 
     Harvard Kennedy School nearly as long as I served on the 
     Supreme Court of Vermont.
       For those of you wondering how a Harvard Fellow spends his 
     time, I can say I have spent the better part of the last two 
     years living in the nineteenth century--more precisely in the 
     Boston of the decade before the Civil War.

[[Page 16684]]

       It was a time when a young man working as a waiter in a 
     coffee house, or a clerk in a clothing store, could be seized 
     by agents of the United States Government, brought before a 
     Judge, and under the provisions of the new Fugitive Slave Law 
     (where no process was due), be sent back into slavery.
       Contrary to what I thought I knew about American history, 
     Boston in the period leading up to the Civil War, was in the 
     words of Charles Francis Adams, Jr., ``almost avowedly a 
     proslavery community.'' ``It was a time'' wrote Emerson, 
     ``when judges, bank presidents, railroad men, men of fashion, 
     and lawyers universally all took the side of slavery.''
       Well, almost all. I am interested in understanding how a 
     society, and particularly the legal establishment of 1850s 
     Boston, was transformed from the beginning of the decade when 
     Daniel Webster said ``no lawyer who makes more than $40 a 
     year is against the Fugitive Slave Law,'' to the end of the 
     decade when lawyers literally went to war against it.
       My window on that time, curiously enough, opened when I saw 
     a portrait of a lawyer of that period.
       So this day, for many reasons, has prompted me to look to a 
     future as far removed from us today as the Boston of 1850. A 
     century from now when each of us will be someone's memory, 
     there will be, I trust, remembrances of things past.
       In some building if not this one, there will be a wall 
     where portraits of forgotten Chief Justices still hang--or 
     where an enterprising curator has retrieved old paintings and 
     artifacts for an exhibit of our times.
       And on some class field trip (for those will always be with 
     us), among a group of very bored students, there may be (if 
     the world is lucky to still have teachers as inspiring as 
     Mrs. Amestoy), a bright, curious student who will pause in 
     front of this painting.
       She will not, of course, recognize its subject, but as she 
     looks through the window in the portrait, she will see Mt. 
     Mansfield. And the window of the painting will begin to open 
     for her a window on our time.
       Our young historian will immerse herself in the flood of 
     newspapers, opinions, and books of those long ago days at the 
     beginning of the twenty-first century. On the basis of the 
     documentation and her own insight, she will attempt to bring 
     to life the color and passion when the social changes were so 
     profound that even on our own time scholars characterized the 
     upheaval as ``The Great Disruption.''
       If our young scholar has had a history teacher as good as 
     Mr. Remington, she will know she cannot rely on a single 
     perspective. (In any event, my autobiography, The 
     Indispensable Man, will long be out of print). But our future 
     historian will be struck, as many historians have been, by 
     the disproportionate impact Vermont has had on American 
     history. She will not lack in material looking back at our 
     time.
       One Vermont Senator whose unparalleled leadership of the 
     Senate Judiciary Committee, and pivotal endorsement of 
     America's first African-American President, will echo down 
     the halls of history; another whose rejection of the narrow 
     partisanship of his party realigned the political balance of 
     the United States Senate. A Governor whose candidacy for the 
     Presidency altered the nature of presidential campaigns; 
     another whose exemplary service at the beginning of the 
     twenty-first century reflected the virtues Vermont's 
     eighteenth century constitution calls ``absolutely necessary 
     . . . the firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, 
     industry, and frugality.''
       Our historian will read of an opinion of the Vermont 
     Supreme Court that framed a debate for a nation. And of the 
     people of Vermont who demonstrated what the result is when 
     that debate is conducted with respect and resolved in 
     humanity.
       If the Vermont of the twenty-second century is as blessed 
     as ours, there will still be a justice system that ``speaks 
     for principle and listens for change.'' Just as the 
     Commission on the Future of Vermont's Justice System 
     envisioned when on the eve of the twenty-first century a new 
     Chief Justice wrote: ``if the future is realized in the way 
     every member of the Commission devoutly wishes it to be, a 
     century hence our successors will hear these fundamental 
     principles resonate as clearly as we hear them resonate 
     today.''
       I am optimistic about that future. How could I not be with 
     these daughters?
       This portrait (assuming, of course, it is actually hung) 
     may gather dust well into the next century. As school field 
     trips will endure, I am confident that so too will the duty 
     of new law clerks to conduct students on tours.
       To the question: ``Who is that in the painting?'' I trust 
     that current and future clerks will always know the answer 
     is: ``A Vermonter.''

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