Exit Interview: Mich. Supreme Court Chief Justice Elizabeth Clement looks back at her tenure

Last week, Wisconsin held a state Supreme Court election that smashed records for campaign dollars — and included major spending by billionaires Elon Musk and George Soros. At the federal level, the judicial branch has been hearing a flurry of cases about Trump administration policies.

And this month, the Michigan Supreme Court is undergoing a change. Chief Justice Elizabeth Clement is stepping down. Clement was a Republican Party nominee and the timing of her departure will give Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer the chance to replace her.

In a wide-ranging interview, the outgoing chief justice joined Morning Edition host Doug Tribou to discuss what her resignation will mean for the court, the types of cases the court chooses to hear, why she would like to see Michigan change its election process for justices, and the reason she's leaving the bench.

Doug Tribou: You were appointed by Republican Governor Rick Snyder to fill a vacant seat on the state Supreme Court in 2017. You had been chief legal counsel for the Snyder administration before joining the court. Then you were elected to a full eight-year term in 2018. Your term would have run through next year. Why did you feel this was the right time to step aside?

EC: Well, I don't know that it was the right time to step aside, honestly. I wish that things had lined up better timing-wise and that I could have served to the end of my term. But the opportunity presented itself. The current president of the National Center for State Courts has served in that role for over 21 years. This was an opportunity that was only going to come up one time for the rest of my career. And it's really the only thing that I would have left the court for.

DT: Well, you’re leaving the court to become president of the National Center for State Courts, as you mentioned. Tell us a bit about that organization and the work you’ll be doing there.

EC: What the National Center does is serve every single state with best practices. They are at the cutting edge of everything going on in the judicial branch. So for example, they are currently working on generative AI, far ahead of what any court is doing right now and it's because they are able to pull in chief justices and judges and court staff from all over the country and gather all of those great ideas and then share them back with the entire judicial branch.

DT: While the candidates for the court are listed without party affiliation, they do receive nominations from state parties. Justices who were nominated by the Michigan Democratic Party currently hold a 5-2 majority over Republican nominees. Your departure will give Gov. Gretchen Whitmer the opportunity to appoint your replacement — and give the court a 6-1 majority of justices supported by Democrats. Did you give that split on the court any consideration before making your decision to take your new job outside the courts?

EC: I have spent the last seven and a half years really focusing on the fact that the Supreme Court and all of our courts in Michigan are supposed to be nonpartisan. And I know that we have this quirky way of the nominations and, you know, some people think it's a great system. I have my own thoughts on that.

Did I take that into consideration? You know, I didn't. The governor has already made one appointment to the Supreme Court. I know that they are going through a very, very deliberative process to make sure that they have someone that balances the current expertise and knowledge of the court. And so I just have to put trust in that system that appointed me and know that the right person will be selected.

DT: Would you like to see the nominating process — where the parties formally endorse a candidate — removed from the process? Would you like to see a change there? It sounds like you might.

EC: I would, yeah. In the legislative branch and the executive branch, we expect there to be partisan divide and conflict. That helps keep those branches in check. But the judicial branch, when you look at the Supreme Court and the money that is put into campaigns and the desire to have someone of a political ideology, I think that it does a disservice.

It's frustrating to me when I hear people talk about Republican-majority-nominated court or the Dem-nominated-majority court because when I'm sitting around that table, I don't see that. What I see is seven justices that are working very, very hard to get to the right answer. Yes, they bring their background and their experience to the table. We can't be completely objective. We're all going to have bias, but it's incumbent on us to check one another and to have those tough conversations and to push one another.

And so I would like to see that play out in the [election] process as well, where the public doesn't feel like there's this strange thing that happens, where political parties are part of that decision making.

DT: Well and along those lines, over the years you have joined the Democratic nominees on the court in the majority on a number of opinions, including a ruling on school districts being allowed to ban guns on school property. You also endorsed Kimberly Ann Thomas — who is now on the court, she was a Democratic Party nominee. And some of those moves led to a lot of pushback or criticism directed at you. Is it tough to shut out that political pressure that’s going on outside the court?

EC: No. [Laughs]

DT: [Laughs]

EC: When I took the oath to be a justice on the Supreme Court, I took that very seriously. And I try to keep all those outside noises out of my life.

I knew that I was going to get pushback. It didn't matter to me which party Justice Thomas was nominated by. I had worked with her — her commitment to youth in the juvenile justice system and her commitment to the legal profession with her background, teaching at [the University of Michigan Law School] — and I was thinking about what's best for the court, what's best for the state of Michigan, when it comes to who's leading our judiciary. And I had absolutely no qualms about supporting her.

As far as case decisions, I'm doing my best to say what I believe that the law says. I've dissented plenty as well. Those things don't get talked about as much as when maybe I've joined a majority that people were surprised by or not wanting me to join.

DT: You’ve heard and written about many cases in your time on the court, and I would like to ask if there are one or two cases that stand out to you as the most significant or maybe especially representative of the type of work you’ve tried to bring to the court?

EC: It was surprising to me when I joined the court, how many cases we had that involved termination of parental rights and how difficult those cases were. What I hope is that I shifted the court to say these cases deserve a little bit more time and attention, even if the end result is the same as what the original recommendation was.

DT: Well, talking about the cases that the court selects, we spoke with Justice David Viviano at the end of his term a few months ago. He spoke about the focus of the court and the types of cases it takes...

David Viviano: "The current court spends a lot more time on sort of one-off cases where we want to reach a certain result, maybe in a family law case. We spend a lot more time — and we've reversed judges — in family cases where there aren't really broadly applicable legal principles at stake. And so that's been sort of frustrating for me. We've done the same, I think, in the criminal realm, where we get involved in fact-intensive cases where there aren't always broadly applicable legal principles at stake. I think that's where the focus of the Supreme Court should be. I think that's our mission. And again, until the last few years, I think we spent, that's where we spent most of our time."

DT: What’s your response to that idea of pursuing cases that have or appear to have statewide significance?

EC: Yes, the court has probably spent more time on what Justice Viviano referred to as one-offs, but I don't view those as one-offs. Even if they're fact-intensive and they may only apply to that case or just a few cases that are similar to that case, I don't think that that should exclude us from our duty to give each and every case the attention that it deserves.

So I do not think that the court has shifted. I think that if a solid Michigan Supreme Court historian went back and looked at the prior decade, or the decade before that, that they would find examples of that with different machinations of the court.

DT: You became chief justice after Bridget Mary McCormack stepped down from the court in 2022 also before the end of her term. She left to become president and CEO of another legal organization.

And Justice David Viviano chose not to run for reelection in November. He told us that as a father with a young family he felt the need to earn more.

A state Supreme Court justice currently makes about $181,000 a year. You have spoken about the issue of judicial compensation in the past. How much is pay affecting the court’s ability to retain justices?

EC: You know, everyone's decision to leave the court is individual. I look at it a little bit more broadly, and I think that it's important that we look at the data. In October of 2025, all judges in Michigan will be paid more than the Michigan Supreme Court justices. I'm talking about district court judges, circuit court judges, probate court judges, the Michigan Court of Appeals, and the federal judges. They've made more than the Michigan Supreme Court for a number of years.

I want to be clear, attorneys do not seek to be judges for the pay. There is, in my experience, always an underlying desire to serve the public. But I do think that it is hard to recruit people. You have to run a statewide election. You are criticized, often for, you know, this decision or that decision. It would be nice if the pay reflected that and reflected the legal profession in general.

Your colleague Justice Megan Cavanagh will replace you as the chief justice. Chief justices are selected by the justices on the Supreme Court. You were both elected in 2018. What will Cavanagh bring to the role of chief justice?

EC: Chief Justice-elect Cavanagh is a dear friend of mine.

We have the Michigan Judicial Council, which helps us set our mission of the direction that the judiciary is headed. And that is public information. We have public participation in that process, but each chief [justice] is able to set their own stamp on things. And Justice Cavanagh was an engineer before she went to law school. She thinks about things differently. So I see her driving forward so many of the important initiatives that I worked on, that prior Chief Justice Bridget McCormack worked on. And those include trial court funding, the statewide case management system, legal representation for child welfare.

But I think because of the way that we've set up the Judicial Council, there's not going to be an upheaval and a complete 180 from the direction that the court has been going in the last decade.

DT: Well, Chief Justice, thank you very much for your time this morning and best of luck in the next chapter.

EC: Thank you very much, Doug. I appreciate it.

Editor's notes: Some quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity. You can hear the full interview near the top of this page.