After more than seven years of handing down rulings on Massachusetts’ highest court, Supreme Judicial Court Justice David Lowy of Marblehead is handing in his black robe for the head general counsel post for the University of Massachusetts system.
“This opportunity came up, and it’s just too awesome a job not to take,” he told the Marblehead Current in a phone interview.
Lowy will officially step down on his birthday on Feb. 3, capping over a quarter century as a Massachusetts judge. Before the SJC, he served on the Massachusetts District Court for four years and the Massachusetts Superior Court for 15 years.
“He is somebody who literally at every step along the way throughout his professional career has demonstrated a sense of fairness and a high degree of intellect and thoroughness in everything he’s done,” then-Gov. Charlie Baker said of Lowy in 2016 during his Supreme Judicial Court confirmation hearing.
According to State House News Service reports, Lowy was one of several SJC nominations made by former Baker that reshaped the court’s membership and shifted its ideological balance over the past seven years. The turnover steered the court toward Baker’s brand of pragmatic incrementalism and a non-activist judicial philosophy, making it less likely to hand down broadly progressive rulings.
One of the most high-profile cases Lowy presided over as a Superior Court judge was the 2015 murder trial of Phillip Chism, a Danvers High School student convicted of raping and murdering his 24-year-old math teacher, Collen Ritzer.
In that case, Lowy also denied a motion to impound a video and a transcript of an interview in which Chism confessed to the crime, citing the public’s right to know. His decision was upheld by the SJC, which he had joined by the time the court’s ruling was issued, though he did not participate in its deliberation.
On the SJC, he weighed in on the constitutionality of a so-called millionaire‘s tax and two state drug lab scandals. In the latter, the high court issued sweeping decisions wiping out tens of thousands of drug convictions.
“I have witnessed the impact of poverty, discrimination, addiction and mental health challenges in the lives of thousands and thousands of people. What I have come to learn is that few people — even the overwhelming majority of people we sentence in Superior Court — are bad human beings,” Lowy said during his 2016 confirmation hearing. “I am not disavowing personal responsibility with this observation; I am only noting the importance of compassion and empathy. While we cannot always understand other people’s problems, it is incumbent upon a judge to try.”
He also stressed the importance of public service and giving back to the community as driving forces throughout his time as a judge, pointing out that his parents worked hard to give him opportunity.
“Public service is an opportunity for me to give back to everything that this community and country has given me,” Lowy said. “My dad escaped the Holocaust at 4 years old. He worked his way through dental school. My mom grew up on the third floor of a three-floor walkup. All four of my grandparents were immigrants.”
The retiring justice — who lost extended family in the Holocaust and has memorialized their lives extensively in public remarks — said his background instilled in him a powerful sense of gratitude and desire to contribute through civic duty.
Beyond his judicial responsibilities, Lowy has been a long-time adjunct law professor at Boston University School of Law, New England Law Boston and Suffolk University Law School. He has taught thousands of aspiring legal professionals over the past 33 years, and in his new gig will teach as an adjunct professor.
“It’s one of the most important things I do,” Lowy told the Current. “If I can have an impact on them that’s going to enhance their education and maybe help them heal the world someday, that means the world to me.”
The justice said he aims to impress upon students the weighty responsibility lawyers have to conduct themselves with integrity, protect citizens’ rights and enhance public discourse.
“Lawyers have a disproportionate responsibility to hopefully enhance the level of civility of the discussion in the public square and to be leaders in their communities,” Lowy said.
Lowy also clerked for Judge Edward F. Harrington in federal district court, an experience he described as crucial. He has tried to “pay it forward” by providing similar mentorship to his own law clerks, Lowy said.
In his new position, Lowy will oversee strategy, policy and operations as the University of Massachusetts’ top lawyer. It also marks a return to the system that educated him, having graduated from University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
As his departure looms, Lowy leaves an SJC subtly transformed since he first took the bench in 2016. He said new judges inherently influence the court’s character, but core guiding principles remain moored.
“The [Massachusetts] Constitution is an organic document, so there’s always change,” Lowy said. “But what remains constant is that ideology does not rule there. It’s really about the recognition that we as judges have an awesome responsibility to ensure justice.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Lowy is the husband of Virginia Buckingham, president of the Marblehead Current’s Board of Directors.
